News Feeds

El 2 y 3 de octubre se realizó en Santiago de Chile la VI Conferencia Latinoamericana de la Red Global de Hospitales Verdes y Saludables organizada por Salud sin Daño para América Latina.  

Durante las dos jornadas se discutieron temas relacionados a los desafíos ambientales y la importancia de la reducción de emisiones en el contexto del sector salud,  y se conocieron experiencias concretas que han generado avances en establecimientos de salud de la región, en el marco de los objetivos planteados en la Agenda Global para Hospitales Verdes y Saludables.

GAIA LAC estuvo representada por Alejandra Parra, asesora en plásticos y basura cero, en el primer panel dedicado a la eliminación gradual de plásticos en el sector salud con la presentación Plásticos y combustibles fósiles: una relación que urge romper.

The post GAIA en la VI Conferencia Latinoamericana de la Red Global de Hospitales Verdes y Saludables first appeared on GAIA.

“If natural gas was the cheapest option to meet the peak, the markets would select it,” said Sean Kelly, co-founder and CEO of forecast provider Amperon and a former energy analyst.

At the heart of nearly every electronic device is a printed circuit board: typically a flat, green board covered with computer chips and other electronic circuit components. The world produces over 50 million metric tons of electronic waste a year, and hard-to-recycle PCBs make up a big part of that waste.

Now researchers from the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Material Science and Technology have found a way to make those green boards truly green, by making them biodegradable. The team  incorporated the boards made from the wood-based material into a functioning computer mouse that is fully compostable, as detailed in the journal Scientific Reports.

PCBs are typically made of fiber-reinforced epoxy resin, a composite material in which glass fibers are embedded in a petroleum-based plastic. The composite is not easy or valuable enough to recycle, so it usually ends up in landfills or burned to separate the valuable metals on the board for reuse.

In attempts to make PCBs more sustainable, researchers have in the past made PCBs using the veinous structures of leaves and from biodegradable mushroom skin. Some have also tried to make PCBs using plastics that are easier to recycle.

 

.IRPP_ruby , .IRPP_ruby .postImageUrl , .IRPP_ruby .centered-text-area {height: auto;position: relative;}.IRPP_ruby , .IRPP_ruby:hover , .IRPP_ruby:visited , .IRPP_ruby:active {border:0!important;}.IRPP_ruby .clearfix:after {content: "";display: table;clear: both;}.IRPP_ruby {display: block;transition: background-color 250ms;webkit-transition: background-color 250ms;width: 100%;opacity: 1;transition: opacity 250ms;webkit-transition: opacity 250ms;background-color: #eaeaea;}.IRPP_ruby:active , .IRPP_ruby:hover {opacity: 1;transition: opacity 250ms;webkit-transition: opacity 250ms;background-color: inherit;}.IRPP_ruby .postImageUrl {background-position: center;background-size: cover;float: left;margin: 0;padding: 0;width: 31.59%;position: absolute;top: 0;bottom: 0;}.IRPP_ruby .centered-text-area {float: right;width: 65.65%;padding:0;margin:0;}.IRPP_ruby .centered-text {display: table;height: 130px;left: 0;top: 0;padding:0;margin:0;padding-top: 20px;padding-bottom: 20px;}.IRPP_ruby .IRPP_ruby-content {display: table-cell;margin: 0;padding: 0 74px 0 0px;position: relative;vertical-align: middle;width: 100%;}.IRPP_ruby .ctaText {border-bottom: 0 solid #fff;color: #0099cc;font-size: 14px;font-weight: bold;letter-spacing: normal;margin: 0;padding: 0;font-family:'Arial';}.IRPP_ruby .postTitle {color: #000000;font-size: 16px;font-weight: 600;letter-spacing: normal;margin: 0;padding: 0;font-family:'Arial';}.IRPP_ruby .ctaButton {background: url(https://www.anthropocenemagazine.org/wp-content/plugins/intelly-related-posts-pro/assets/images/next-arrow.png)no-repeat;background-color: #afb4b6;background-position: center;display: inline-block;height: 100%;width: 54px;margin-left: 10px;position: absolute;bottom:0;right: 0;top: 0;}.IRPP_ruby:after {content: "";display: block;clear: both;}Recommended Reading:Engineers print recyclable electronics using nothing but water

 

The Swiss scientists made their PCB substrate using molecules that are natural building blocks of wood. Cellulose is a fibrous carbohydrate molecule found in plant cell walls. Lignin is a polymer that acts like a glue to hold other molecules together and impart strength and rigidity to woody biomass.

The team extracted tiny fibers made of lignocellulose from the lignin-rich cellulose pulp that is produced as a waste during biorefinery processes. The researchers add water to the fibers and grind the paste, which breaks down the relatively thick cellulose fibers into thinner fibrils. The result is a fine network of interconnected fibrils.

When the researchers squeeze the water out of the mixture under high pressure, the fibrils move closer and form a dense, solid mass. This gives a compostable board that shows mechanical properties, electrical properties, surface uniformity, and heat conductivity comparable to a conventional circuit board made of fiber-reinforced epoxy resin.

But the wood-based PCB is slightly less resistant to water and humidity. The researchers plan to improve that property next.

As a demonstration, the team inkjet printed electronic components on the lignocellulose PCB board to make the circuit that goes in a computer mouse. They 3D-printed the mouse case with an eco-friendly material made of wood and a bioplastic.

“This study underscores the potential of wood-derived nanomaterials to reduce electronic waste associated with conventional PCB materials and promote the development of a more eco-friendly electronics,” they write.

Source: Yuliiya Dudnyk et al. Printed circuit board substrates derived from lignocellulose nanofibrils for sustainable electronics applications. Scientific Reports, 2025.

Image: ©Anthropocene Magazine

 

U.S electricity generation rose 3% in 2024 “and is expected to rise for the foreseeable future,” the Edison Electric Institute said Tuesday.

Headline News:

• “As Trump Champions Fossil Fuels, The World Is Betting On Renewable Energy” • Even with clean energy roadblocks in the US, the world set a record for renewable energy investment over the first half of this year. Wind and solar power are meeting and even exceeding a global rise in energy demand, displacing power generated by fossil fuels. [MSN]

Wind turbines (Peter Beukema, Unsplash)

• “China Outlines More Controls On Exports Of Rare Earths And Technology” • China outlined new curbs on exports of rare earths and related technologies, extending controls over use of the elements critical for many products ahead of a meeting later this month between US President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping. [ABC News]
• “Unprecedented Glacier Melting Will Leave US Peaks Ice-Free For The First Time, Study Finds” • The glacier melt in the Sierra Nevada mountains of California is unprecedented, according to a study. Mountain glaciers are a key feature of various US national parks, but as the Earth warms, many of these ancient ice masses are rapidly melting. [Euronews]
• “Fossil Fuel Companies Control A Mere 1.42% Of Renewable Energy Projects Worldwide, Study Reveals” • A study by the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona shows fossil fuel companies failing on their pledge to lead the energy transition. They control a mere 1.42% of renewable energy projects. [MSN]
• “How China Took Over The World’s Clean Energy Boom” • China’s clean energy sector is doing brisk business with less developed economies even as the US retreats from the clean energy race. In fact, 51% of China’s EV sales growth in the current year came from nations outside the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. [OilPrice.com]

For more news, please visit geoharvey – Daily News about Energy and Climate Change.

The banning of harmful pesticides is one of the most important victories for health and the environment in Europe’s recent history. Yet as the push to reauthorise neonicotinoids in France shows, there is a real risk that restricted substances could make a comeback. The agrochemical industry is pursuing productivity at all costs, and the EU’s dwindling power in enforcing limits could pave the way for further deregulation.

Once, it was believed the only thing that could break up a French protest was summer vacation. But this year, the French rallied on – at least online – and their perseverance was rewarded.

For weeks on end, citizens mobilised against a provision in the so-called Loi Duplomb (“Duplomb Law”), which sought to reauthorise acetamiprid, a neonicotinoid pesticide long banned for its suspected negative effects on pollinators and human health. The law, framed as a way to simplify rules for farmers, would have reopened the door to using acetamiprid. A citizens’ initiative against the bill received more than two million signatures, making it one of the most supported environmental petitions in France’s recent history.In response to the public outcry, the French constitutional court decided in August to strike down the controversial part of the legislation.

Nevertheless, the Duplomb Law marks a dangerous precedent: a rollback of green policies. At the European level, key pillars of the European Green Deal have been watered down, delayed, or abandoned over the past year. At the same time, national governments are pressing on with their own deregulatory agendas in the name of pragmatic reforms, which, in reality, only serve the interests of large-scale agribusiness.

This shift accompanies a change in the balance of power. The EU’s recently proposed Multiannual Financial Framework (its long-term budget plan, MFF) would grant greater flexibility to member states in how they allocate funding – including in agriculture. Although framed as a response to emergencies and inflation, the move reduces Brussels’ ability to enforce green conditionalities, weakening already fragile mechanisms for accountability.

Yet this story isn’t only one of retreat. Environmental groups, small farmers, and civil society are mounting strategic resistance. Across Europe, the future of farming is being contested. So who is shaping that future, and on whose terms?

From ambition to retreat

When the European Green Deal was launched in 2019, it marked a bold step towards environmental sustainability across all sectors, especially agriculture. Flagship initiatives like the Farm to Fork Strategy, the Sustainable Use Regulation (SUR), and the Nature Restoration Law (NRL) promised binding targets for food system transformation, pesticide reduction, and biodiversity restoration.

But five years later, the political climate changed radically. With European elections looming, the EU Commission declared a strategic pause on Green Deal regulations in early 2024. This shelved or delayed several proposals, including a directive on soil health and regulations on food waste, while promising a “simplification” of CAP compliance rules. Major farmers’ unions, including FNSEA – the largest agricultural union in France – celebrated the move as a win for “common sense.” In the run-up to the elections, environmental policies were increasingly framed as elite overreach and a threat to the livelihoods of “ordinary farmers”. The resulting public sentiment became a political boon for right-leaning parties, particularly in rural regions.

Now, in 2025, much of the ambition of the Green Deal has crumbled. The SUR, which would have made a 50-per cent reduction in pesticide use a legally binding target, was rejected by the European Parliament after a relentless lobbying campaign. Leading the charge were Copa-Cogeca, the powerful umbrella organisation representing European farmers and agricultural cooperatives, along with major agrochemical industry groups. They argued the regulation threatened yields, put farmers’ livelihoods at risk, and undermined European food sovereignty.

By the time it reached the Commission SUR had already been watered down, and if passed, it would have been largely ineffective as mandatory crop-specific rules and a legally binding framework were missing from the legislation. It was officially withdrawn by the Commission in early 2024, prompting environmental organisations to call it the symbolic collapse of the Green Deal’s regulatory backbone.

On the other hand, the Nature Restoration Law survived, but barely. Passed in a weakened form in February 2024, the law lost its teeth during negotiations between the European Commission, the Council of the EU, and the European Parliament.  Several restoration targets, including those on peatlands and farmland biodiversity, became conditional or vague. Agricultural land was granted major flexibilities, thanks in part to lobbying by member states aligned with industrial farming interests.

Over the last two years, farmer protests have repeatedly broken out across Europe, driven by economic pressure, the advancing Mercosur agreement, falling incomes, and a sense of institutional neglect. In response, politicians have sought to “simplify” regulations, framing green policies as a luxury in a time of crisis. This crisis rhetoric has been a hallmark of the Right since the beginning of the war in Ukraine. In the aftermath of the Russian invasion, the concept of food sovereignty has been invoked strategically – not to empower local food systems, but to justify loosening environmental standards and pushing protectionist trade measures. This shift has allowed national governments to deflect attention from systemic problems in the agri-food model by pointing fingers at Brussels.

Now, the newly proposed MFF revision gives EU members more flexibility in allocating funds under the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). While framed as a way to respond to inflation and crisis, the reforms also weaken the Commission’s leverage to enforce environmental conditions. Critics warn this could create a fragmented patchwork of rural policies, where some states push ahead with agroecology while others fall back on high-input industrial models.In other words, by weakening its own enforcement power and letting national governments take the lead, the EU has opened the door to deregulation dressed up as pragmatism.

The newly proposed MFF revision could create a fragmented patchwork of rural policies, where some states push ahead with agroecology while others fall back on high-input industrial models.

Calls for deregulation are coming from multiple fronts. In early 2024, Spanish farmers protested the EU’s pesticide bans that they said would put paella rice cultivation yields at risk. In addition, EU member states like Italy, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Lithuania, Poland, Portugal, and Romania called for the reintroduction of banned pesticides in the summer of 2025. But by and large, the most ambitious regulation rollback attempt so far comes from France, and its Loi Duplomb.

Enter Duplomb

In early 2024, French Senator Laurent Duplomb introduced a bill promising to “simplify administrative procedures” for farmers. Officially titled “Bill for the Simplification and Reduction of Regulations Applicable to Local Authorities and Businesses”, the so-called Duplomb Law quickly became a flashpoint in France’s agricultural and environmental debate.

The bill claimed to reduce bureaucratic burdens and restore dignity to farming. However, beneath the language of simplification, critics identified a strategic push to dismantle environmental safeguards. Although the French constitutional court ultimately struck down an article that would have allowed France to reauthorise banned pesticides, including acetamiprid, its mere inclusion signalled a willingness to test the limits.

For the director of Générations Futures, a leading French environmental NGO campaigning against pesticide use and for sustainable agriculture, the timing of the Duplomb Law is no coincidence: “The collapse of the SUR and the failure of Farm to Fork left a vacuum. Laws like Duplomb are rushing in to fill it.” François Veillerette warns that even when censured, the risk of banned substances returning remains real. “The political will is still there. The strategy is simply shifting.”

Meanwhile, the pesticide industry itself has been quietly working to adapt (and thrive). One avenue for the return of banned pesticides is reclassification as biocides. This allows certain substances banned for agricultural use to continue circulating in domestic, industrial, or public settings, where regulation is less stringent. For instance, acetamiprid is found in common household items, like insecticides for home use. Other substances include propiconazole, used to protect wood from insects, or clothianidin, thiamethoxam, and imidacloprid, which are deployed as industrial insecticides. Moreover, some pesticides like Fastac, outlawed in France in 2020, are still being produced under industrial certifications and then exported abroad.

The pesticide industry itself has been quietly working to adapt (and thrive).

Veillerette says Générations Futures is preparing to challenge these cases one by one in order to prevent the pesticide industry from finding ways to reauthorise them for agricultural use. “It makes no sense to prohibit a molecule in the fields but allow its presence elsewhere. This loophole undermines both public health and regulatory credibility.”

Another overlooked detail is the possibility of a fast-track mechanism in the original Duplomb bill, which would have allowed for ministerial derogations for neonicotinoids – including acetamiprid and possibly flupyradifurone – with limited explicit constraints on the mode or length of use. Though this provision was not included in the final legislation, environmental groups remain concerned that such procedural tricks could reappear in future proposals. The concern is not only the substances themselves, but a broader shift in regulatory philosophy. “We’re replacing the precautionary principles [of regulatory authorisations] with a logic of efficacy [of production] at all costs – even when human or environmental health is on the line,” Veillerette says.

According to Kristine de Schamphelere, a policy officer for agriculture at Pesticide Action Network, the same strategy is underway at the EU level. “A similar TINA (There Is No Alternative) narrative is indeed also being developed over the last years, trying to force the EU and national governments not to implement EU law on pesticides, playing on the fear of food security.”

By framing environmental regulation as excessive or anti-farmer, the Duplomb Law won rhetorical ground even before its articles were debated. Yet as critics have pointed out, it is not small-scale farmers who stand to benefit. A spokesperson for the Confédération Paysanne – a French farmers’ union advocating for small-scale, sustainable, and socially just agriculture – has told the Green European Journal the union supports administrative simplification. However, Thomas Gibert also added that “the deregulation of social and environmental norms doesn’t work for small farmers. We need these norms to protect us and our citizens.”

According to Gibert, the Duplomb Law risks deepening the structural inequalities in the farming sector. He argues that France is moving towards “developing an agricultural system that will squash out the small farmers, always favouring a large enterprise-controlled agriculture.”  To genuinely help smallholders, Gibert says it would be better to simplify CAP payments. “We cannot forget that what is really needed is fair livelihoods for our farmers. This is the only way our small farmers can make a decent wage, by fairly pricing their products,” he adds. “Minimum prices, as promised by Macron, are what our farmers need. All other propositions simply fall hollow.”

Lobbying and resistance

Since losing its absolute majority in the French parliament, president Emmanuel Macron’s government has relied on the support of Les Républicains, the conservative party from which Senator Duplomb hails. The Right has used this leverage to steer rural and agricultural policy towards its own priorities. Meanwhile, the government’s uneasy alliance with the powerful FNSEA has further blurred the lines between public interest and corporate influence.

In recent years, Macron has increasingly made concessions to the farming lobby in an effort to contain rural frustration. Take, for instance, the 55 million euros diverted from the organics sector to young farmers, without consulting those who were affected (although the organics sector also has young farmers of its own). However, these concessions have only given further legitimacy to the far right. Moreover, they have failed to bring stability to France, a country that has now seen five prime ministers resign or be forced out of office in three years.

But even though major national and international lobbies are pressing for deregulation under the guise of easing burdens on farmers – consistently framing green reforms as economically unviable or politically naïve – the public, courts, and scientific community remain firmly opposed to the reintroduction of banned pesticides. According to a survey conducted by the European Food Safety Authority, awareness of EU food safety systems has risen by six per cent since 2022, and 67 per cent of Europeans now consider pesticides among their top food safety concerns.

Although national and international lobbies are pressing for deregulation, the public, courts, and scientific community remain firmly opposed to the reintroduction of banned pesticides.

These sentiments culminated in the two-million-strong petition launched by 23-year-old student Eléonore Pattery. What began as a grassroots initiative quickly evolved into a broad civic movement: environmental NGOs like Générations Futures, France Nature Environnement, and PAN Europe lent organisational support, while figures like activist Camille Etienne, YouTuber Jujufitcats, and model Charlotte Lemay amplified its reach across social media. Ultimately, the petition and public outcry had a decisive impact on the Loi Duplomb.

With or without Duplomb

In the European Union, deregulatory agendas are now at the forefront of policymaking. From national laws like Duplomb to the EU’s strategic retreat from environmental ambition, the trajectory is clear: environmental protections are being reframed as obstacles to productivity, and “simplification” is increasingly a euphemism for deregulation.

The July 2025 proposal for the next Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) only reinforces these concerns. With cuts of more than 20 per cent to the Common Agricultural Policy, and new mechanisms giving Member States greater flexibility over how funds are spent, Brussels is relinquishing tools that once enforced green conditionalities. Critics warn it may enable uneven implementation, undermining shared goals for sustainability. France’s decision to uphold the ban on acetamiprid marked a clear victory for science and civil society. But it’s only one battle in a much larger confrontation over the future of agriculture in Europe. What is under threat is the possibility of livable societies where food is healthy and farmers are fairly paid.

Discussion of a “grand bargain” between the Government of Canada and the Government of Alberta has emerged in recent months. We ascertain this is a deal whereby the federal government fast-tracks a new bitumen pipeline through federal environmental...

Dictionary (WG) * Members: Franco Augusto, Matthew Burke, Ashish Kothari, Vera Kozak, Lizah Makombore, Vasna Ramasar, Carlos Tornel (coordinator), Matías Vaccarezza. Description Our short project aim: To create a collection of concepts in an online platform where we foster intercultural knowledge of radical alternativesalternatives

In our latest, Scott talks with journalist Adam Federman (@adamfederman) about recent developments of the Trump administration targeting organizations, donors and individuals who oppose them. Listen in: Bio// Adam Federman…

This is a re-post from The Climate Brink by Andrew Dessler

In the last few weeks, I’ve often been asked, “What’s the most significant mistake in the DOE Climate Working Group Report?” While the report contains numerous issues, one in particular stands out for its far-reaching implications. I write about it in this post.

A recent report from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Climate Working Group (DOE CWG) attempts to analyze and critique the findings from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). In doing so, the DOE CWG Report makes several fundamental errors due to a misunderstanding of the peer-reviewed literature.

One in particular stands out, as it leads the authors to incorrectly represent the established science on extreme weather.

Section 8.5 of the DOE CWG Report focuses on a single table in the IPCC report (Table 12.12 in the Sixth Assessment’s Working Group 1 Report) and, based on this table, concludes: “it is not currently possible to attribute changes in most extreme weather types to human influences.”

With this statement, the CWG demonstrates that they have no idea what they’re talking about.

Confusing “detection and attribution” with “emergence”

Table 12.12 isn’t about detecting whether humans are making extreme weather more extreme. That work — known as detection and attribution — is detailed extensively in other parts of the IPCC report, particularly Chapter 11.

For example, at the end of Section 11.4.4, when talking about extreme precipitation, they state:

In summary, most of the observed intensification of heavy precipitation over land regions is likely due to anthropogenic influence, for which greenhouse gas emissions are the main contributor.

You can also see attribution statements connecting humans to, for example, extreme heat and some types of drought.

Chapter 12 and Table 12.12 are about something different and much stricter: emergence.

To understand the difference, let me give you an example. Imagine you have a data set that is an index of some kind of extreme weather:

Randomly generated (synthetic) data representing some parameter of interest (e.g., extreme temperatures). Also shown is a 30-year running average.

Detection and attribution identifies a statistically significant change in the parameter of interest. In this case, I determine the date of detection as the first year when there is a statistically significant difference between the 30-year running mean and the pre-industrial mean:

Same plot as above, but with the date of detection and attribution noted. We define detection & attribution is the first year when there is a statistically significant difference between the 30-year running mean and the pre-industrial mean.

Note that detection and attribution says nothing about the size of the change. It only says that the climate has shifted. If you have really good data and a long time series, you can detect small changes in a parameter

Emergence is all about the size of the influence. It means that the climate has shifted so much that the average value of some parameter is larger than the largest value in a pre-industrial climate. In other words, you’ve emerged into a new climate.

Here is emergence in the example data set:

Same plot as above, but with the date of emergence noted. The shaded region is the range of this synthetic index in a pre-industrial climate. Emergence is defined as the date where the 30-year mean exceeds the range of the pre-industrial climate.

The plot shows that the 30-year running mean (orange line) exceeds the pre-industrial range (the shaded region) in the mid-1990s. That’s the time of emergence. [Update: I should have used standard deviation of pre-industrial values, not the full range. My bad.]

Because emergence requires a large shift, it’s a far rarer occurrence than simply detecting and attributing a trend in some weather parameter.

I should note that my simple example above really focuses on detection. Detection and attribution research uses sophisticated techniques to identify a trend and assign its cause to human influence through, e.g., the use of fingerprints (e.g., a cooling stratosphere).

For example, recent work by Santer et al. (2025) showed that, had humanity had the quality measurements we have today, they could have detected and attributed global average warming to humans by the late 1800s.

the central flaw in the DOE Report’s argument

Many parameters have trends that have been detected and attributed to human activities (Chapter 11) but have not yet changed so much that they have emerged (Chapter 12).

The entire argument in Section 8.5 rests on this single, critical misunderstanding of these distinct concepts. This leads the authors to arrive at a demonstrably incorrect conclusion: “it is not currently possible to attribute changes in most extreme weather types to human influences.”

In fact, the extensive attribution findings detailed in Chapter 11 of the IPCC report make it clear that humans are indeed influencing extreme weather.

The authors of the DOE CWG report appear to have noticed this discrepancy. On page 95, they write:

p. 95 of the DOE CWG report

Given this puzzling (to them) disconnect between Chapters 11 and 12, they could have spent some time digging into this to understand it. They could, for example, have actually read the IPCC reports and supporting literature. Or they could have emailed a few experts and asked why chapters 11 and 12 reached seemingly different conclusions.

But they didn’t. Instead, the authors expended zero effort to get the science right.

And, believe it or not, there are even more errors in this section. If you want to see the full list of mistakes, see the full comment on Section 8.5 beginning on p. 316 of the Climate Experts’ Review of the DOE CWG Report.

How to think about the DOE CWG Report

The errors in the DOE CWG Report are significant. The effect of these errors is to generate conclusions that cast unwarranted doubt on established climate science. As I’ve said before, the generation of unwarranted doubt is the same strategy that the tobacco industry used to delay regulation in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s.

It’s also worth noting that the errors in Section 8.5 also prove that the report never had any legitimate peer review. It only took me 30 seconds of reading this section to realize, “Oh, they f*cked this up.” Anyone familiar with climate science would quickly identify this error, so the fact that this was not caught means any “peer review” the report had before it was released was a fiction.

If the DOE is committed to a legitimate debate over climate science, the scientifically appropriate step would be to acknowledge and correct this and other identified errors. So far, that has not happened.

In fact, they’ve taken the opposite tact. For example, Steve Koonin wrote a Wall Street Journal op-ed in which he declared: “Though scientists supporting the so-called consensus on climate change have organized several serious critiques [of the DOE CWG Report], these at most add detail and nuance to our findings, without negating the report’s central points.”

To suggest the identification of this core error in Section 8.5 merely “adds detail and nuance,” as Steve Koonin did, is laughable. Our analysis of Section 8.5, along with our analysis of other sections, directly falsifies the report’s core assertions about climate change’s impact on extreme weather.

This serves as a litmus test for the report’s scientific credibility. A commitment to scientific integrity requires the authors to produce a point-by-point response to the expert comments, overseen by an independent review editor.

A refusal to do so would suggest that the report should be viewed as an advocacy piece rather than a scientific document, and its conclusions should be treated with caution.

While this post focuses on one section, the rest of the DOE CWG Report is not much better. The entire document contains a pattern of errors, including simple errors of understanding, misinterpretation of source material, cherry-picking of data and sources, and selective citation.

The public and policymakers deserve a more accurate and rigorous scientific assessment of climate science for decision-making. I suggest that the U.S. Government withdraw this report and instead establish a transparent assessment of climate science that follows best practices for credible assessments. They can call it the National Climate Assessment.

Shell’s top U.S. executive has done the unthinkable: publicly critiqued a White House that is (mostly) friendly to oil and gas. In an interview flagged by Reuters, Colette Hirstius, President of Shell USA, warned that the Trump administration’s decision to halt fully permitted offshore wind projects is “very damaging” to investment. She added: “I think uncertainty in the regulatory environment is very damaging. However far the pendulum swings one way, its likely that its going to swing just as far the other way.” And, crucially: “I certainly would like to see those projects that have been permitted in the past continue to be developed.” 

Let’s translate: Shell loves policy certainty—especially when it locks in LNG and oil profits. But if the pendulum suddenly smashes wind, the same pendulum could later smack hydrocarbons. That’s not climate leadership; that’s volatility management.

What changed (and why Shell cares)

• $679 million yanked from 12 offshore wind projects (Aug 29): The administration rescinded federal funding, kneecapping momentum in a sector that was central to Biden-era energy plans. (Reuters)

• Work-stop orders & whiplash: Even developers like Ørsted have had to navigate stop–start directives; one order was later lifted, and Ørsted now says Revolution Wind is back on track for H2 2026, while Sunrise Wind targets H2 2027—a poster case for policy whiplash. (Reuters)

Meanwhile, back at Shell HQ…

Shell’s message in 2025 has been unmistakable: double down on LNG while quietly trimming the green shoots. CEO Wael Sawan: LNG will be Shell’s “top contribution” to the energy industry over the next decade, with demand seen up 60% by 2040. Reuters

And the company just confirmed a $600 million impairment for scrapping its high-profile Rotterdam biofuels plant—bringing total hits on that venture to about $1.4 billion. Reuters

So yes, Shell is upset about halted wind projects; but Shell also cut a major green project and pivoted toward gas. That’s not hypocrisy—just the standard “all of the above” strategy where “above” mainly means hydrocarbons.

The Atlantic Shores plot twist

Before applauding Shell’s newfound love of wind certainty, remember Atlantic Shores in New Jersey. Shell exited the project earlier this year, taking nearly a $1 billion write-off, even as the JV said it would press on. The FT has noted this, and trade press plus Reuters have documented the withdrawal and impairments.

WTF Shell?

Shell wants stable rules so:

• LNG expansions can hum along,

• Wind doesn’t get kneecapped today (in case gas gets kneecapped tomorrow), and

• The company doesn’t keep eating hundred-million-dollar impairments when the policy winds shift.

It’s not hard to see why BlackRock and Vanguard—among Shell’s biggest shareholders—are watching. If the “E” in ESG is wobbling, the “G” (governance amid policy chaos) should keep them up at night.

The receipts (key quotes and facts)

• “Very damaging” to investment; “uncertainty … is very damaging”; “I certainly would like to see those projects … continue to be developed.” — Colette Hirstius to the FT, via Reuters. 

• $679m pulled from wind-related projects (Aug. 29). 

• Ørsted’s U.S. projects resuming after stop-start orders—uncertainty writ large. 

• Shell: LNG is the top contribution for the next decade. 

• Shell: $600m hit tied to scrapped Rotterdam biofuels plant. 

• Shell’s Atlantic Shores exit and ~$1bn write-off. 

Disclaimer

Warning: satire ahead. The criticisms are pointed, the humour intentional, and the facts stubbornly real. Quotes are reproduced word-for-word from trusted sources. As for authorship—John Donovan and AI both claim credit, but the jury’s still out on who was really in charge.

Shell to Trump: Don’t Smash the Turbines — We’re Busy Burning Gas was first posted on October 8, 2025 at 8:56 pm.
©2018 "Royal Dutch Shell Plc .com". Use of this feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this article in your feed reader, then the site is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact me at john@shellnews.net

UK onshore gas production fell to its lowest level in July 2025 since November 2023.

Onshore daily oil production was the lowest for nine months. Monthly oil volume increased slightly in July compared with June but it was by less than would have been expected for the longer month.

Key figures

Daily oil production:  barrels of oil per day (bopd): 11,806bopd
June 2025 11,940bopd, May 2025 12,490bopd, April 2025 12,441bopd, March 2025 12,310 bopd, February 2025 12,651bopd, January 2025 12,393bopd, December 2024 12,538bopd, November, 12,395bopd, October 11,000bopd, September 11,193 bopd, August 11,776 bopd, July 12,314 bopd

Oil volume: 58,187m3
June 2025 56,946m3, May 2025 61,558m3, April 2025 59,337m3, March 2025 60,671m3, February 2025 56,316m3, January 2025 61,080m3, December 2024 61,793m3, November 2024 59,120m3, October 2024 54,213m3, September 2024 53,387m3, August 2024 58,037m3, July 2024 60,690m3

Oil weight: 48,036 tonnes
June 2025 47,043 tonnes, May 2025 50,857 tonnes, April 2025 49,000 tonnes, March 2025 50,079 tonnes, February 2025 46,520 tonnes, January 2025 50,444 tonnes, December 2024 51,029 tonnes, November 2024 48,858 tonnes, October 2024 44,849 tonnes, September 2024 44,133 tonnes, August 2024 47,948 tonnes, July 2024 2024 50,148 tonnes

Daily gas production (million standard cubic feet per day mmscf/d): 5.69mmscf/d
June 2025 6.36mmscf/d, May 2025 5.90mmscf/d, April 2025 6.27mmscf/d, March 2025 7.91mmscf/d, February 2025 8.77mmscf/d, January 2025 9.09mmscf/d, December 2024 9.52mmscf/d, November 2024 9.28mmscf/d, October 2024 9.94mmscf/d, September 2024 8.67mmscf/d, August 2024 8.59mmscf/d, July 2024 7.22mmscf/d

Gas volume (thousand standard cubic meters ksm3): 4,991ksm3
June 2025 5,403ksm3, May 2025 5,178ksm3 , April 2025 5,329ksm3, March 2025 6,948ksm3, February 2025 6,952ksm3, January 2025 7,982ksm3, December 2024 8,356ksm3, November 2024 7,882ksm3, October 2024 8,726Ksm3, September 2024 7,367Ksm3, August 2024 7,540Ksm3, July 2024 6,339Ksm3

Gas weight (tonnes): 3,966 tonnes
June 2025 4,347 tonnes, May 2025 4,173 tonnes , April 2025 4,266 tonnes, March 2025 5,444 tonnes, February 2025 5,478 tonnes, January 2025 6,273 tonnes, December 2024 6,652 tonnes, November 2024 6,291 tonnes, October 2024 6,861 tonnes, September 2024 6,034 tonnes, August 2024 6,186 tonnes, July 2024 5,143 tonnes

Onshore oil’s contribution to UK total production: 2.03%
June 2025 2.24%, May 2025 2.08% , April 2025 2.02%, March 2025 2.01%, February 2025 2.05%, January 2025 2.02%, December 2024 2.02%, November 2024 2.18%, October 2024 1.88%, September 2024 2.08%, August 2024 2.70%, July 2024 2.16%

Onshore gas’s contribution to UK total production:  0.7%
June 2025 0.73%, May 2025 0.56% , April 2025 0.58%, March 2025 0.71%, February 2025 0.77%, January 2025 0.74%, December 2024 0.78%, November 2024 0.82%, October 2024 1.04%, September 2024 0.89%, August 2024 0.91%, July 2024 0.72%

Volume of flared gas at UK onshore oil fields: 656ksm3
June 2025 880ksm3, May 2025 893ksm3, April 2025 571ksm3, March 2025, 899ksm3, February 2025 848ksm3, January 2025  940ksm3, December 2024 880ksm3, November 2024 1,066m3, October 2024 950 ksm3, September 2024 943 ksm3, August 2024 971 ksm3, July 2024 1,035ksm3

Volume of vented gas at UK onshore oil fields: 99ksm3
June 2025 95ksm3, May 2025 93ksm3, April 2025 92ksm3, March 2025 99ksm3, February 2025 99ksm3, January 2025 137ksm3, December 2024 103ksm3, November 2024 106ksm3, October 2024 119 ksm3, September 2024 98ksm3, August 2024 97ksm3, July 2024 122ksm3

Volume of produced water at UK onshore oil fields: 1,478,343m3
New data field – we will add past data in the coming months. June 2025 1,300,308m3, May 2025 1,406,011m3 , April 20251,385,532m3, March 2025 1,335,865m3, February 2025 1,280,605m3

Volume of reinjected produced water at UK onshore oil fields:  1,465,993m3
New data field – we will add past data in the coming months. June 2025 1,285,614m3, May 2025 1,389989m3 , April 2025 1,370,247m3, March 2025 1,319,683m3, February 2025 1,266,963m3

Volume of produced water at UK onshore gas fields: 162m3
New data field – we will add past data in the coming months. June 2025 175m3, May 2025 179m3 , April 2025 137m3, March 2025 187m3, February 2025 176m3

Number of onshore fields which recorded some oil production in July 2025: 26
June 2025 26, May 2025 April 2025 29, March 2025 29, February 2025 29, January 2025 29, December 2024 29, November 2024 30,October 2024 30, September 2024 31, August 2024 31, July 2024 31

Number of onshore fields which recorded some gas production in July 2025: 10
June 2025 10, May 2025 8, April 2025 11, March 2025 12, February 2025 14, January 2025 15, December 2024 15, November 2024 11, October 2024 13, September 2024 8, August 2024 7, July 2024 8

Number of onshore producing fields which recorded no oil production in July 2025: 17
June 2025 17, May 2025 16, April 2025 14, March 2025 13, February 2025 14, January 2025 14, December 2024 14, November 2024 13, October 2024 13, September 2024 12, August 2024 12, July 2024 12

Number of onshore producing fields which recorded no gas production in July 2025: 14
June 2025 15, May 2025 17 , April 2025 14, March 2025 13, February 2025: 11, January 2025 11, December 2024 10, November 2024 15, October 2024 13, September 2024 17, August 2024 18, July 2024 16

This article uses data compiled and published by the North Sea Transition Authority (NSTA) from reports by oil and gas companies. This is published about three months in arrears. All the charts are based on the NSTA data. Occasionally, figures change retrospectively.

Details Daily production Volume and weight Contribution to total UK production Flaring and venting Produced and reinjected water

The data shows no reinjected water at onshore gasfields

Producing fields Oil Gas Non-producing fields Oil

The July 2025 data shows there was no production at 17 UK onshore oilfields. This was the same number and fields as in June 2025.

The non-producing fields were:

• Angus Energy: Lidsey
• Britnrg Limited: Newton-on-Trent
• EP UK Investments: Humbly Grove
• Heyco (formerly Egdon Resources): Dukes Wood, Fiskerton Airfield, Kirklington, Waddock Cross
• HHDL/UKOG: Horse Hill
• Perenco: Kimmeridge
• Star Enery (formerly IGas): Avington, Beckingham West, Egmanton, Nettleham, Rempstone, Scampton, South Leverton, Stainton

Gas

There was no production from 14 onshore fields in July 2025, according to the data. This was one fewer than in July 2025. Askern coal mine vent produced in July 2025 after no production in June 2025. The Florence coal mine vent and Hatfield Moor gas storage injection recorded no gas in July 2025. Ineos fields at Airth and Doe Green were not included in the data in the month’s data.

The non-producing fields were:

• Heyco: Kirkleatham
• EP UK Investments: Humbly Grove
• Infinis Energy: coal mine vents at Bevercotes, Florence, Gedling, Kings Mill Hospital, Mansfield, Markham, Prince of Wales, Sherwood, Warsop and Whitwell
• Scottish Power: Hatfield Moor and Hatfield Moor gas storage injection

Operators Oil Gas

Updated 9/10/25 to correct oilfield production table

2022-2025 onshore data archive

June 2025

May 2025

April 2025

March 2025

February 2025

January 2025

Production review of 2024

December 2024

November 2024

October 2024

September 2024

August 2024

July 2024

June 2024

May 2024

April 2024

March 2024

February 2024

January 2024

December 2023

November 2023

October 2023

September 2023

August 2023

July 2023

June 2023

May 2023

April 2023

March 2023

February 2023

January 2023

2022 annual production

November 2022

October 2022

September 2022

August 2022 – see note about revised data

July 2022 – see note about revised data

June 2022

May 2022

April 2022

March 2022

February 2022

January 2022

By Martha Quillin

Duke Energy expects North Carolina’s electricity demands to soar over the next 15 years and says it will meet the need reliably and affordably by building new gas and nuclear power plants and extending the lives of its aging coal-fired plants.

Clean-energy advocates have assailed the company’s new “Carbon Plan” update, saying it commits the state to old-school polluting technologies or unproven designs that could cost rate-payers billions of dollars while better, cheaper options are available.

“North Carolina is the top state for business, and our focus is on ensuring Duke Energy’s low energy rates continue to support this region’s economic success,” Kendal Bowman, Duke Energy’s North Carolina president, said in a statement accompanying the plan’s release this week. “By expanding our diverse generation portfolio and maximizing our existing power plants to meet growth needs, we will ensure reliable energy while saving all our customers money.”

Gov. Josh Stein and public interest groups including NC WARN, the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, the Sierra Club, Vote Solar and the Southern Environmental Law Center say the plan ultimately would result in higher bills for customers and make it harder for North Carolina to meet its goal of carbon neutrality by 2050.

“Duke Energy is retreating from the state’s clean energy future that can continue to bring good jobs and lower costs to North Carolina,” Stein said in a statement. “In its plan, Duke has eliminated wind, reduced solar, and delayed nuclear while increasing our dependence on price-volatile natural gas and coal. I call on the utilities commission to require significant changes to secure a clean and affordable energy future for North Carolinians.”

…

Jim Warren, executive director of NC WARN, said Duke Energy also has an incentive to overestimate the amount of electricity that will be needed in the future to justify additional construction, the cost of which is passed on to rate-payers. NC WARN has challenged Duke Energy in the past over plans to add nuclear reactors at its Shearon Harris plant in New Hill, southwest of Raleigh.

Duke’s new resource plan “continues the horrible record of one of the world’s worst climate polluters,” Warren said. “Duke proposes to greatly increase methane gas for power and experimental nuclear plants while extending its burning of coal for at least 15 years. The plan slashes projections for large-scale solar and continues its suppression of rooftop solar. This would put billions into the rate system, leading power bills to double or triple over time while driving even more weather disasters that are devastating North Carolina communities.

“We call on Governor Stein and other state leaders to denounce and rein in this out-of-control corporate monopoly.”

Warren said that even if Duke’s estimates about rapid future growth in manufacturing pan out, the utility and state legislators could create incentives for companies to install solar collection and battery systems that would reduce strain on the electrical grid and provide some security against outages.

“Solar is the cheapest form of electricity ever created,” Warren said. Especially in cases where the state offers incentives for companies to locate here, Warren said, “There should be a requirement that these places use some of their investment up front to make their facilities as self-generating as possible in terms of their energy use. Why wouldn’t you? You have all these huge buildings and the roofs and walls and parking areas are empty. We should be having solar and storage put on all these places.”

Continue reading

The post Duke Energy wants coal, gas for rising power needs. Clean-energy groups object. — The News & Observer appeared first on NC WARN.

As the federal government prepares to table its next budget on November 4, most of the public debate has centred on how big the deficit will be – as if that is the only metric of significance to Canadians. This is predictable and disappointing. At a moment when Canada as a country faces unprecedented challenges to our prosperity and sovereignty arising from Donald Trump’s trade war and other threats, a much more important question is how will the budget equip Canada to protect itself against Trump’s attacks, reorient away from so much dependence on the U.S. market, and invest in the things (including physical and social infrastructure) necessary to a self-reliant and sovereign economy. The single-minded focus on deficit reduction is driven primarily by those (like the corporate sector) with a vested interest in public sector austerity and tax cuts.

Centre for Future Work Director Jim Stanford appeared this week before the Senate’s National Finances committee pre-budget hearings. He tried to put deficit concerns in the context of the bigger challenges facing Canada, debunking false claims (including those from the interim Parliamentary Budget Officer) that Canada is standing on a fiscal “precipice.” Canada’s net federal debt (33% of GDP) is small by historical standards, small relative to other countries, and smaller than the private debts of Canadian businesses and households. Imposing needless austerity at this point would only worsen the more serious debt challenges facing businesses and families, and undermine an economy already staggering in the face of Trump’s trade war.

Here are Stanford’s opening remarks to the committee.

Opening RemarksSenate Standing Committee on National FinancePre-Budget Hearings, October 7, 2025By Jim Stanford, Economist and DirectorCentre for Future Work

Thank you very much, Senators, for the opportunity to meet and share my views on Canada’s economic and fiscal situation in the lead-up to the upcoming federal budget.

The Centre for Future Work is a labour economics research institute, founded in Canada in 2020. We conduct research on the full range of economic issues facing working people: including the future of jobs, wages and income distribution, skills and training, sector and industry policies, globalization, the role of government, public services, and more. The Centre also develops timely and practical policy proposals to help make the world of work better for working people and their families.  The Centre is independent and non-partisan.

Because of the unprecedented attacks on our prosperity and sovereignty from the Trump administration in the U.S., Canada’s economy is now at a historic juncture. This budget will be an important marker in our response to this challenge. It is not a normal budget, and it cannot be debated and analyzed through a normal lens.

Canada is in a struggle for our long-term viability as a distinct economic, democratic, and social entity. The pre-eminent importance of defending our country, protecting our industries, and sustaining our communities must shape the decisions made in this budget. The situation is not unlike a wartime budget – although I fervently hope it doesn’t come to that.

Government’s role is never to “balance its books”. Government’s role is to do whatever is necessary to protect its citizens – an imperative that is all the more urgent at a time like. This doesn’t mean that budget balances are irrelevant. Simply that they must be understood in context of the broader mission and responsibility of government.

Thank goodness Canada didn’t worry about balancing the budget during the Second World War. Thankfully, we are not in the same scenario today. But we nevertheless face a historic and overarching challenge to protect Canada, our economy, and our values. Debate over the upcoming budget must be framed in that context.

Predictably, most of the public discourse around the budget is focusing too narrowly on how big will the deficit be. This focus is unhelpful. The deficit will be significant, no doubt about it. And it should be.

Partly because Canada is on the verge of recession (if we are not already in one). Deficits are appropriate in that situation. But more importantly because of the enormous responsibilities government faces right now, which will clearly require deficit funding: including aid to export industries, investments in infrastructure, strengthening income supports (like EI) and public services for Canadians who need them, defense spending, and more. Those things have to be done. And as Keynes famously showed, if we can do something, we can afford it.

The federal government’s net financial debt as of June 30 this year was equivalent to 33% of GDP (Statistics Canada Table 38-10-0237-01). Its accumulated deficit (including actuarial liabilities) at end of fiscal 2024 equaled 42% of GDP (Finance Canada Fiscal Reference Tables, Table 2). Deficits are expected for the past and next fiscal years in the order of 2-3% of GDP.

Contrary to the exaggerated claims of some critics, this does not constitute an emergency in any way, shape or form. Indeed, given an appropriate macroeconomic context (with decent growth and moderate interest rates), deficits of that scale could be incurred every year, while maintaining stability in the debt-to-GDP ratio (which is a much more relevant measure of fiscal position than the size of the nominal deficit measured in billions of dollars).

Canada’s deficit and debt are small relative to other industrial countries. Many of those other countries face similar challenges to Canada – although Canada is more exposed to the consequences of Mr. Trump’s madness than almost any other country. So, if anything, our deficit should be bigger than those other countries, not smaller.

Government debt is smaller in relative terms than private debt in Canada. The debt of non-financial corporations equals 150% of GDP. The debt of Canadian households equals 175% of their disposable income. Businesses and households pay higher interest on their debt, have less capacity to manage the broader environment in which they operate, and are more financially precarious than governments (which cannot go bankrupt). Reducing the federal government’s debt by shifting a fiscal burden to households or businesses (through spending cuts) makes the overall debt situation worse, not better.

In this context, I feel it necessary to express my disappointment at the recent interventions from the interim Parliamentary Budget Officer, Mr. Jacques. His judgments that Canada stands “at the precipice” of fiscal crisis, and that the federal fiscal situation is “stupefying” and “shocking”, are economically and historically false, and frankly irresponsible. His mandate is to provide neutral information on budget issues to Parliamentarians, but both the content and the mode of delivery of his remarks have veered far into advocacy, and have done a disservice to informed policy discourse. He should correct those statements. They undermine the credibility of any future research his office produces.

I am very sympathetic to the concept, floated by the federal government, of treating investment and current spending separately in fiscal policy and planning. Of course, we already do that (with accrual accounting and depreciation methods). But a more explicit disaggregation of capital and current spending is helpful, in part so Canadians can better understand the purpose and value of public debt in the context of investment.

When debt is used to finance construction or acquisition of a productive asset, its impact on fiscal sustainability is quite neutral: entries appear on both sides of the balance sheet, and the gradual cost of future depreciation can be offset by proceeds generated by the productive asset.

However, this distinction between investing and saving is not justification for austerity in current program spending. To the contrary, treating public investment as a distinct pillar of fiscal policy provides more fiscal (and political) room for continued federal support for current programs, not less. There is no evidence by any relevant indicator (program spending relative to GDP, federal public sector employment as a share of employment, etc.) that current federal program spending is too high or needs to be cut back. Austerity imposed on current programs would impart a strong and needless contractionary drag on Canada’s economy at a moment when it is already struggling to maintain growth. As always, cutting back government spending in a time of macroeconomic weakness is self-defeating and destabilizing.

To sum up, buttressing Canada’s economy in the face of Mr. Trump’s trade war will require a combination of urgent measures, all of which will require more powerful and determined federal intervention:

• • Supporting Canadian export industries to survive Trump’s tariffs, with emergency aid for firms and workers, and help with retooling and reorienting production and marketing away from the U.S.
  • Investing in public energy, transportation, and social infrastructure to support industrial diversification, productivity growth, and quality of life.
  • Supporting defense spending and other international engagements to strengthen relationships with other countries and promote international stability.
  • Continuing to support current public programs, including provincial transfers for health care and education, and the new federal commitments for pharmacare and dental care.

These are historic priorities. The federal government has abundant fiscal capacity to fulfil its responsibility to lead Canada into a new chapter in its economic history.

The post This Is Not An Ordinary Federal Budget appeared first on Centre for Future Work.

A narrow road meanders through Zimbabwe’s Vumba Mountains, where sweet songs of various bird species fill the air on a sunny afternoon. The distant chatter of monkeys adds to this wildlife melody.

But one sound, once common, no longer echoes over the mountains: the calls of soaring vultures.

These majestic birds have disappeared from this part of Zimbabwe. Big game poachers despise vultures for circling over the carcasses of dead animals — a natural process that inadvertently “snitches” poachers’ illicit activities to game park rangers. Poachers have retaliated by lacing the bodies of their prey with deadly poison, which vultures consume, dramatically increasing the killers’ body counts.

That’s not the only threat these birds face. Habitat loss is a big issue. In some cases vultures are killed for their parts, which are used in traditional “medicine” in some cultures of Zimbabwe. And to a lesser extent, power lines have also killed vultures, who die from electrocution or after collisions with the structures.

The threats have all but wiped out the vultures, in this area known for its birds.

“Birding in the Vumba as well as the Burma Valley area [in Zimbabwe] is considered a shining jewel in the Eastern Highlands, and tourists travel far and wide for the very special birds found here. However, vultures are no longer a presence,” says Sue Fenwick, a trustee of the Friends of the Vumba, an organization working to protect wildlife in the area.

The group’s mission faces many challenges. In this part of Zimbabwe, illegal farming activities have decimated vast tracts of wildlife habitats.

Benhildah Antonio, who manages the Preventing Extinctions Program at Birdlife Zimbabwe, says the twin threats of farming and poisons intersect.

In addition to poachers’ poisons, Antonio says vultures are often poisoned unintentionally. This is prevalent in farming communities surrounding national parks, where lions prey on livestock.

“Farmers put poison on carcasses to target lions or any other predators but unintentionally end up poisoning vultures,” Antonio says. “The vultures will die in large numbers because of their feeding habits. One carcass can have 50 or more vultures feeding on it.”

A Loss That Echoes

Vultures’ disappearance from Zimbabwe and other African countries comes with an environmental cost.

“We call them the ‘clean-up crew,’” says Antonio. “When the vultures feed on dead carcasses, they help us with cleaning the environment; they help us with sanitation. That’s the main ecosystem service we get from vultures. They do this free service. They also reduce the spread of … rabies, anthrax, tuberculosis, and other diseases.”

When vultures eat a carcass, they can digest pathogens without getting sick. At the same time, vultures reduce the available food sources for feral dogs and other scavengers, thereby suppressing diseases like rabies.

Many Species, Similar Threats

According to Birdlife Zimbabwe, Africa is home to 11 vulture species, six of which can be found in Zimbabwe. All but one of the species in Zimbabwe are threatened or endangered.

The International Union of Conservation of Nature Red List, which assesses the conservation status of species around the world, classifies the white-backed vulture, white-headed vulture, and hooded vulture as critically endangered. The lappet-faced vulture and cape vulture are categorized as endangered and “vulnerable to extinction” respectively, while the palm-nut vulture is listed as “least concern” (although it was last assessed a decade ago).

Regardless of their conservation status, all vultures in Zimbabwe have special protection under the Zimbabwe Parks and Wildlife Act, making it illegal to kill a vulture, even in cases of accidental harm.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Jeannee Sacken (@authorjeanneesacken)

The six species have specific habitat niches, but many of their ranges overlap in Zimbabwe. The lappet-faced vulture breeds in Lowveld semi-arid areas like Gonarezhou National Park, while the white-headed vulture breeds in Hwange National Park and Gonarezhou. Cape vultures rely on cliffs for breeding and roosting, particularly in the central parts of the country. The hooded vulture breeds in low-lying areas of Tsholotsho and Gokwe. Palm-nut vultures, though considered rare in Zimbabwe, are seen mostly in the country’s Eastern Highlands.

But no matter where they’re found, they face the same dangers — and vultures’ declines aren’t unique to Zimbabwe.

A Worldwide Threat

José Tavares, director of the Vulture Conservation Foundation, says the major threats to vultures in Africa and globally come from the ingestion of poison baits.

“These [poison baits] are mostly put to deal with human-wildlife conflict, although in Southern Africa sentinel poisoning has also been significant,” Tavares says, referring to the poisoning to prevent circling vultures from giving away poachers’ locations. “The illegal poisoning of wildlife is a non-discriminatory measure that has a profound impact.”

Zimbabwe presents a powerful illustration of the problem. According to the Zimbabwe Parks and Wildlife Management Authority (Zimparks) 2019-2022 Action Plan, the country experienced increased vulture poisoning incidents that are causing vulture populations to decline and harming other species. Mass poisoning events cited in the report include 191 vultures in Gonarezhou National Park in 2012, 40 at a farm in Fort Rixon in 2014, 22 in Sinamatella in 2015, 43 at Sentinel Ranch in 2016, 94 on the border of Gonarezhou National Park in 2017, 24 at Sengwa Wildlife Research Station in 2017, 28 in Main Camp in 2018, and 21 in Hwange National Park in 2019. There is no recent data from Zimparks covering the post-COVID period.

According to former Zimparks director Fulton Mangwanya, a single vulture provides over US$11,000 worth of ecosystem services.

Subscribe to our newsletter

“By halting the spread of disease, they are worth much more to society in saved health service costs, not to mention contributing significant revenue to the tourism sector as well,” Mangwanya wrote in the action plan.

This poses direct threats to humans. In India, for example, one study reveals that between 2000 and 2005, the loss of vultures caused around 100,000 additional human deaths annually, resulting in more than £53 billion per year in mortality damages, or the economic costs associated with premature deaths. These deaths, experts say, were due to the spread of disease and bacteria that vultures could have otherwise removed from the environment.

Has the decline in vultures caused similar problems in Zimbabwe?

Kerri Wolter, chief executive officer of VulPro, a South African nonprofit organization devoted to safeguarding Africa’s vulture species, says it’s impossible to link the recent outbreak of anthrax in Gonarezhou National Park to the massive poisoning deaths of 280 vultures in the park in the past few years. The anthrax outbreak last year killed more than 120 animals, including four elephants, 75 buffaloes, and 38 kudus. However, more studies are needed on the possible link between the declining vulture population in Zimbabwe and rising cases of anthrax in the country’s national parks.

But Wolter says the future of these birds is dire and the threat of vulture species’ extinctions is a very real possibility.

“If we cannot get a grip on poisonings, I fear we will continue to see losses and some species disappearing,” she says.

Saving Zimbabwe’s Vultures

With an understanding of these threats, local and international groups have mobilized several efforts in Zimbabwe that aim to save the country’s last vultures.

Birdlife Zimbabwe, for example, is working with communities to resolve human-wildlife conflict issues so they don’t end up causing vulture deaths as collateral damage.

“We have created vulture support groups in [Zimbabwe’s] Gwayi area, where community members do vulture monitoring and educate other community members about vulture conservation,” Antonio says. “We are also educating and building capacity for law-enforcement agents so that they are conscious about vulture conservation and crimes against vultures. We also work with traditional healers because of belief-based use of vultures in traditional medicines.”

And Tavares says the Vulture Conservation Foundation is fighting illegal poisoning through engaging with the competent authorities for the proper enforcement of the law and adequate investigation of illegal poisoning incidents to reduce impunity.

Wolter says their work impacts the whole Southern Africa region.

“We lead by example and have assisted, trained, and worked with Victoria Falls Wildlife Trust and Jabulani Safaris [in Zimbabwe] and continue to do so,” she says.

Other efforts, including one funded by tourism, help vultures by giving them what they need most: safe food. The Victoria Falls Safari Collection, operated by the Africa Albida Tourism hospitality group, runs the Vulture Culture Experience at Victoria Falls Safari Lodge, where the birds are provided with food, typically animal carcasses, to support their survival and well-being.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Estnat Engsted (@ekewildphotography)

“Our … conservation initiative has been highly successful in providing a safe food source for hundreds of vultures every day and reducing the risks of poisoning they face in the wild,” says Anald Musonza, head of sales and marketing at Victoria Falls Safari Collection.

Musonza says the program has also become a powerful educational platform, where thousands of visitors learn about the plight of these highly endangered raptors and turn into ambassadors for vulture conservation.

“Even when our hotels stood still during COVID, the Vulture Culture Experience never stopped — that’s how seriously we take conservation,” Musonza says.

He says they work with VulPro as well as the Victoria Falls Wildlife Trust on this project.

“While the activity is free of charge, guests may make donations towards vulture research, and $1 from selected dishes at our MaKuwa-Kuwa Restaurant is donated to vulture conservation programs,” he says.

Musonza says their biggest challenges have been in constantly raising awareness of the threats vultures face and the significant role they play in the ecosystem.

“The poisoning of these birds is also of great concern, which is why education plays a crucial role in this conservation initiative,” Musonza says.

Previously in The Revelator:

Newest Flock of Wild California Condors Faces an Old Threat: Lead Poisoning

The post Saving Zimbabwe’s Vultures appeared first on The Revelator.

We handpick and explain the most important stories at the intersection of climate, land, food and nature over the past fortnight.

This is an online version of Carbon Brief’s fortnightly Cropped email newsletter. Subscribe for free here.

Key developments Forest fund delays and cuts

TFFF BEHIND SCHEDULE: Brazil’s flagship forest fund, the Tropical Forest Forever Facility (TFFF), is “running behind schedule as officials deliberate on how to structure the complex financial vehicle” in time for COP30, Bloomberg reported. The “ambitious” fund aims to raise $125bn to help countries protect rainforests “using investment returns from high-yielding fixed-income assets”, it explained. However, the outlet reported that investor events have either not been held or cancelled, while officials are still mulling “possible structures” for the fund.

CUTS DEEP: Environmentalists fear that “sweeping spending cuts for forest protection” by Argentina’s “pro-business libertarian” president, Javier Milei, could endanger the country’s forests, Climate Home News reported. The impacts of these cuts are “already becoming evident”, contributing to deforestation – particularly in the northern Gran Chaco region, environmentalists told the outlet. According to Argentine government data, the country lost about 254,000 hectares of forest nationwide in 2024. Milei – who has said he wants to withdraw Argentina from the Paris Agreement – faces a “crucial midterm election” in October that could make environmental deregulation even easier, the outlet wrote.

BANKING ON THE AMAZON: A new report found that 298 banks around the world “channelled $138.5bn” to companies developing new fossil-fuel projects in Latin America and the Caribbean, Mongabay reported. The experts behind the study told the outlet: “Some major banks have adopted policies to protect the Amazon, but these have had little impact, as they do not apply to corporate-level financing for oil and gas companies operating in the Amazon.” Mongabay approached every bank, but only JPMorgan Chase responded, declining to comment. 

Subscribe: Cropped

• .pull-left{background: #f4f4f4} .listing ul{list-style:none; margin:0} ol {background: #F4F4F4; padding: 0px;} .listing ul {background: #F4F4F4; padding: 0px;} .listing li{font-size:0px;}

  Sign up to Carbon Brief's free "Cropped" email newsletter. A fortnightly digest of food, land and nature news and views. Sent to your inbox every other Wednesday.

‘Green to grey’ 

‘600 FOOTBALL PITCHES’: Europe is losing “green space…at the rate of 600 football pitches a day”, according to a new, cross-border investigation by the “Green to Grey Project”, the Guardian reported. The outlet – part of the Arena for Journalism in Europe collaboration of journalists and scientists behind the project – added that Turkey accounted for more than a fifth of the total loss in Europe. While nature “accounts for the majority of the losses”, the research showed that the EU is also rapidly building on agricultural land, “with grave consequences for the continent’s food security and health”, it continued. 

‘TWICE AS HIGH’: Conducted by 40 journalists and scientists from 11 countries, the investigation found that the “natural area” lost to construction in the EU was “twice as high as official estimates”, Le Monde reported. Despite Brussels setting a 2011 target to “reduce the EU’s yearly land take” to 800km2 – “more than 100,000 football fields” – the EU is “artificialising more than 1,000km2 of land per year”, it added.

KEY DRIVERS: While the “main drivers of land loss across Europe” are housing and road-building, Arena for Journalism in Europe found many instances of construction “that serve only a minority or that are not built based on public need”, such as luxury tourism sites. Between 2018 to 2023, “an area the size of Cyprus” in nature and cropland was lost to construction, they added. Researchers who “scrutinised millions of pixels in search of lost natural areas” found that Finland’s tourism boom is “encroaching on the last remaining sanctuaries” in Lapland, another Le Monde story reported.

News and views

‘INTRACTABLE’ OFFSETS: A new review paper found that the failure of carbon offsets to cut emissions is “not due to a few bad apples”, but “down to deep-seated systemic problems that incremental change will not solve”, the Guardian wrote. Study co-author Dr Stephen Lezak told the outlet: “We have assessed 25 years of evidence and almost everything up until this point has failed.” The worst of these “intractable problems” were with “issuing additional credits” for “non-additional”, “impermanent” and double-counted projects, the Guardian noted.

INSTITUTIONALISING AGROECOLOGY: The Cuban government issued a national decree providing a “more explicit legal framework” for the implementation of agroecological principles across the country, according to a release from the Caribbean Agroecology Institute. The decree also announced a new national fund for promoting agroecology. Yamilé Lamothe Crespo, the country’s deputy director of science, innovation and agriculture, “emphasised that agroecology is a model capable of responding to the global climate crisis”, teleSUR reported. 

ZERO PROGRESS TO ZERO HUNGER: The world has “made no improvement” towards achieving the “zero hunger” Sustainable Development Goal since it was set in 2015, according to a new report from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization. The report said that “ongoing geopolitical tensions and weather-related disruptions” have contributed to “continued instability in global food markets”. Separately, a new report from the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit thinktank estimated that a “year’s worth of bread” has been lost in the UK since 2020 due to extreme weather impacting wheat harvests, the Guardian reported.

MEATLESS MEDIA: More than 96% of analysed climate news stories across 11 (primarily US-based) outlets “made no mention of meat or livestock production as a cause of climate change”, according to analysis by Sentient Media. Sentient, a not-for-profit news organisation in the US, looked at 940 stories to assess the reported causes of greenhouse gas emissions. Around half of the stories included mention of fossil fuels, it said. Covering the report, the Guardian wrote: “The data reveals a media environment that obscures a key driver of the climate crisis.”

FRAUGHT PATH: One-fifth of migratory species “face extinction from climate change”, according to a new report by the UN’s migratory species convention, covered by Carbon Copy. The “warning” comes as climate change and extreme weather are “altering their ranges [and] shrinking habitats”, the Mail & Guardian wrote. Oceanographic Magazine noted that the North Atlantic right whale is “forced to make migratory detours into dangerous pockets of the ocean” due to warming seas. Down to Earth reported that the range of Asian elephants is “shifting east” in “response to anthropogenic land-use and climate change”. 

GOODBYE, GOODALL: Dr Jane Goodall, the groundbreaking English primatologist, died at the age of 91 last week. BBC News noted that Goodall “revolutionised our understanding” of chimpanzees, our “closest primate cousins. The outlet added that she “never wavered in her mission to help the animals to which she dedicated her life”. CNBC News reported that Goodall followed a vegan diet due to factory farming and the “damage done to the environment by meat production”. She also “encouraged” others to follow her example, the outlet said.

Spotlight What the US government shutdown means for food, forests and climate

This week, Carbon Brief explains the US government shutdown – now in its second week – and its implications for food, forests, public lands and climate change.

The US federal government shut down at 12:01 eastern daylight time on 1 October, as Congress failed to agree on a bill to keep funding the government and its services. 

This is the 11th time that the government has shut down in such a fashion; previous shutdowns have lasted anywhere from a few hours to longer than a month. 

As a result of the shutdown, 750,000 federal employees have been furloughed, or placed on unpaid leave. Others, whose work has been deemed “essential”, are working without pay.

(A law passed during a shutdown in US president Donald Trump’s first term guarantees back pay and benefit accrual for furloughed employees. However, the White House has argued that the law does not necessarily guarantee these benefits.)

Some agencies have seen close to 90% of their employees furloughed.

With a reopening date uncertain, Carbon Brief explored what the shutdown means for food, forests and climate. 

Food and farming

According to the agency’s “lapse of funding” plan, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) planned to furlough about half of its employees for the duration of the shutdown. 

Among the activities put on hold during the funding lapse are the disbursement of disaster-assistance payments for farmers impacted by extreme weather events. The Farm Service Agency, which oversees these payments, will also not process any new loans during the shutdown, such as those that provide assistance to farmers during the harvest.

The Natural Resources Conservation Service, an arm of the USDA with a mission to help private landowners “restore, enhance and protect forestland resources”, has seen more than 95% of its staff furloughed, effectively halting all conservation efforts within the agency.

Certain animal-health programmes – such as the one addressing the highly pathogenic avian influenza outbreak – will continue, but others will shutter for the duration of the funding lapse. Long-term research on animal and plant diseases will also cease.

Forests and fires

The US Forest Service falls under the purview of the USDA. Employees responsible for “responding [to] and preparing for wildland fires” will continue to work during the shutdown; however, “hazardous fuels treatments” – such as prescribed burns or pruning to reduce fuel loads – will be reduced under the agency’s plan. Furthermore, state grants for fire preparedness and forest management “may be delayed”. 

Work on forest restoration projects may potentially continue “on a case-by-case basis”, the plan said. 

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM), a subdivision of the Department of the Interior, will furlough around 43% of its employees, according to its contingency plan. Staff dedicated to fire management will continue to work while “carryover balances” are available, but the number of staff working will be reduced once these funds are exhausted.

Climate change and research

Across the federal government, most research activities are being put on hold, including conference travel and the issuing of new grants. 

Grant recipients may continue carrying out research “to the extent that doing so will not require federal staff” and while funds are available, according to the National Science Foundation’s operational plan. This does not include researchers at federal agencies, such as the Environmental Protection Agency, US Geological Survey and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). 

The funding-lapse plan set out by the Department of Commerce said that NOAA will continue its prediction and forecasting activities, as well as maintain “critical and mission-related” programmes related to research satellites. However, “most research activities” will cease.

Similarly, NASA’s shutdown plan indicates continuing support for satellite operations, but a pause on research activities – except for those “aligned with presidential priorities”.  

Watch, read, listen

MORAINE DILEMMA: A new PBS documentary walked through ancient Inca paths in the Andes to understand how modern communities are confronting the loss of Peru’s glaciers.

SUBSIDISING ‘EXPLOITATION’: A DeSmog investigation revealed how farmers convicted of “exploiting migrant workers” continue to claim “millions in taxpayer-funded subsidies”. 

GROUND TRUTHING: A podcast from the Hindu looked back at 20 years of India’s Forest Rights Act, meant to “address historic injustices” towards the country’s Indigenous communities. 

DEEP DIVE MANUAL: Mongabay journalists shared how they investigated Brazil’s shark-meat purchases that were subsequently served in schools, prisons and hospitals. 

New science

• The frequency of “economically disastrous” wildfires increased sharply after 2015, with the highest disaster risk in “affluent, populated areas” in the Mediterranean and temperate regions | Science
• A “strictly protected” forest in Tuscany had maximum summertime temperatures that were, on average, nearly 2C cooler than those of nearby productive forests over 2013-23 | Agricultural and Forest Meteorology
• Between 2010 and 2020, the water consumed by global crop-growing increased by 9%, putting “additional pressure on limited water resources” | Nature Food

In the diary

• 9-15 October: 2025 World Conservation Congress of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) | Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
• 10-17 October: World Food Forum 2025 | Rome
• 16 October: World Food Day | Global 
• 25 October: Ivory Coast presidential election

Cropped is researched and written by Dr Giuliana Viglione, Aruna Chandrasekhar, Daisy Dunne, Orla Dwyer and Yanine Quiroz. Please send tips and feedback to cropped@carbonbrief.org

Cropped 24 September 2025: High Seas Treaty milestone; ‘Erratic’ water cycle; Family food at COP30

Cropped

|

24.09.25

Cropped 10 September 2025: Flooded ‘food baskets’; Brazil eyes forest finance; Resilient rice

Cropped

|

10.09.25

Cropped 27 August 2025: ‘Frustrating’ Amazon summit; Workplace heat hazards; Record European wildfires

Cropped

|

27.08.25

Cropped 13 August 2025: Fossil-fuelled bird decline; ‘Deadly’ wildfires; Empty nature fund

Cropped

|

13.08.25

jQuery(document).ready(function() { jQuery('.block-related-articles-slider-block_3c3d5e615aa2acd84e89c727beee3eb9 .mh').matchHeight({ byRow: false }); });

The post Cropped 8 October 2025: US government shutdown; EU loses green space; Migratory species extinction threat appeared first on Carbon Brief.

From canola farmers in Canada to car owners in India, biofuels have become the subject of everyday debate across the world.

Liquid biofuels feature heavily in the climate plans of many countries, as governments prioritise domestic energy security amid geopolitical challenges, while looking to meet their climate targets and bolster farm incomes.

Despite a rapid shift towards electrified transportation, biofuels continue to play a leading role in efforts to reduce road-transport emissions, as they work well with many existing car engines. 

At the same time, biofuels are expected to play an important role in decarbonising sectors where emissions are particularly challenging to mitigate, such as shipping, trucking and aviation.

Heated debates continue around using food sources as fuel in the face of record hunger levels, given competing demands for land and crops. 

Despite these arguments, biofuels are seeing heightened demand bolstered by a strong policy push, particularly in developing countries. 

They are expected to feature heavily on the COP30 agenda this year as a key feature of the host Brazil’s “bioeconomy”. 

Below, Carbon Brief unpacks what biofuels are, their key benefits and criticisms, plus how they are being used to meet climate targets.

• What are biofuels?
  • First-generation biofuels
  • Second-generation biofuels
  • Third-generation biofuels
  • Fourth-generation biofuels
• What are the most common biofuels being used today?
• What are the main arguments for biofuels?
  • ‘Renewable’ energy and lowered emissions
  • Use in hard-to-abate sectors
  • Energy security and reducing import dependence
  • Boost to agriculture
• What are some of the main criticisms of biofuels?
  • Production emissions, land-use change and deforestation
  • Impacts on food, biodiversity and water security
  • ‘Feedstock crunch’
• How are countries using biofuels to meet their climate targets?
  • US
  • EU
  • Brazil
  • Indonesia
  • India
  • China
• How could climate change impact biofuel production?

What are biofuels? 

Bioenergy refers to all energy derived from biomass, a term used to describe non-fossil material from biological sources. Biofuels, in turn, are liquid fuels that are produced from biomass. 

These sources are wide-ranging, but commonly include food crops, vegetable oils, animal fats, algae and municipal or agricultural waste, along with synthetic derivatives from these products.

Glossary

Biomass

Non-fossil material of biological origin

Biofuel

Fuels produced directly or indirectly from biomass

Feedstock

Types of biomass used as sources for biofuels, such as crops, grasses, agricultural and forestry residues, wastes and microbial biomass

Bioenergy

All energy derived from biofuels

Bioethanol

A biofuel used as a petrol substitute, produced from the fermentation of biomass from plants like corn, sugarcane and wheat

Biodiesel

A biofuel used as a diesel substitute, derived from vegetable oils or animal fats through a process called transesterification

.glossary-container{ background-color:#fffaf0; padding:1em 1.5em 1.5em 1.5em; border:1.5px solid #333333; } .glossary-container p{ font-family: 'PT Serif'; margin-block-start: 0.25em; margin-block-end: 0.25em; line-height: 1.2; font-size:1.6rem; } p#glossary{ font-weight: 700; font-family: 'PT Sans'; color:#333333; font-size:2.25rem; margin-block-start: 0.5em; } p.term{ font-weight: 700; font-family: 'PT Serif'; color:#333333; margin-block-start: 1em; }

The different types of biomass are referred to as “feedstocks”. They are converted to fuel through one or more processes, such as fermentation or treating them with high temperatures or hydrogen. 

Biofuels are frequently blended with petroleum products in an effort to reduce emissions and reliance on fossil-fuel imports.

Experiments to test whether vegetable oils could run in combustion engines began in the early 1900s. In a 1912 paper, Rudolf Diesel – the inventor of the diesel engine – presciently noted that these oils “make it certain that motorpower can still be produced from the heat of the sun…even when all our natural stores of solid and liquid fuels are exhausted”.

An extract from Rudolf Diesel’s 1912 paper, published in the Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, outlining the importance biofuels could assume in the future. Credit: Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (1912)

Biofuels are divided into four “generations”, based on the technologies and feedstocks used to synthesise them.

Type of biofuelSourceFirst-generationFood crops (eg, sugarcane, corn, wheat, rice)Second-generationNon-edible crops and materials (eg, straw, grasses, used vegetable oil, forest residues, waste)Third-generationAquatic materials (eg, algae)Fourth-generationGenetically modified algae, bacteria and yeast, as well as electrofuels, synthetic fuels and e-fuels

First-generation biofuels

The first – and earliest – generation of biofuels comes from edible crops, such as corn, sugarcane, soya bean and oil palm. Large-scale commercial production of these fuels began in the 1970s in Brazil and the US from sugarcane and corn, respectively.

A monoculture corn crop being harvested in Michigan, US. Credit: Jim West / Alamy Stock Photo

Bioethanol, for instance, is drawn from the fermentation of sugars in corn, sugarcane and rice. Biodiesel is derived from vegetable oils – such as palm, canola or soya bean oil – or animal fats, through a process called transesterification, which makes them less viscous and more suitable as fuels.

Most ethanol is produced using a “dry-mill” process, where grain kernels are ground, slurried, fermented and purified. Source: Renewable Fuels Association (2025). Graphic: Carbon Brief

Because they are derived directly from food crops, experts and campaigners have expressed concerns over the impacts of first-generation biofuels on forests, food security and the environment, as well as indirect land-use change impacts. (See: What are some of the main criticisms of biofuels?) 

Several studies have found that the land-use emissions of first-generation biofuels are severely underestimated, but other experts tell Carbon Brief that this depends on how and where the crops are grown, processed and transported.

According to Dr Angelo Gurgel, principal research scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Center for Sustainability Science and Strategy, the “big image that biofuels are bad” is not always accurate. Gurgel explains:

“Some biofuels can be better than others, varying from place to place and feedstock to feedstock. It depends on where you produce them, how much farmers can increase yields, how effectively a country’s regulations help avoid land-use change and how closely it is connected to international markets. 

“Some options may be very, very good in terms of reducing emissions and other options probably will be very bad.”

Second-generation biofuels

Second-generation biofuels are extracted from biomass that is not meant for human consumption. 

Feedstocks for these biofuels are incredibly varied. They include agricultural waste, such as straw and corn stalks, grasses, forest residues left over from wood processing, used vegetable oil and solid waste. They can also be made from energy crops grown specifically to serve as biofuels, such as jatropha, switchgrass or pongamia.

Close-up of a jatropha plant and its seed pods. Credit: Andris Lipskis / Alamy Stock Photo.

Derived from “waste” or grown on “marginal” land, second-generation biofuels were developed in the early 2000s. These fuels aimed to overcome the food security and land-use issues tied to their predecessors, while increasing the amount of fuel drawn out from biomass, compared to first-generation feedstocks.

These feedstocks are either heated to yield oil or “syngas” and then cooled, or treated with enzymes, microorganisms or other chemicals to break down the tough cellulose walls of plants. They can be challenging to process and present significant logistical and land-use challenges.

Third-generation biofuels

Third-generation biofuels are primarily derived from aquatic organic material, particularly algae and seaweed. While the US Department of Energy began its aquatic species programme in 1978 to research the production of biodiesel from algae, algal biofuel research saw a “sudden surge” in the 1990s and “became the darling” of renewable energy innovation in the early 21st century, says Mongabay.

Because algae grows faster than terrestrial plants, is high in lipid (fatty organic) content and does not compete with terrestrial crops for land use, many scientists and industry professionals consider third-generation biofuels an improvement over their predecessors. 

However, high energy, water and nutrient needs, high production costs and technical challenges are key obstacles to the large-scale production of algae-based biofuels. Since the early 2010s, many companies, including Shell, Chevron, BP and ExxonMobil, have abandoned or cut funding to their algal biofuel development programmes.

The Algaeus, a 2009 modified version of the Toyota Prius designed to run on electricity and algal biofuels. Credit: Sipa USA / Alamy Stock Photo. Fourth-generation biofuels

Genetically modified algae, bacteria and yeast engineered for higher yields serve as the feedstock for fourth-generation biofuels. These fuels have been developed more recently – from the early 2010s onwards – and are an area of ongoing research and development.

Some of these organisms are engineered to directly or artificially photosynthesise solar energy and carbon dioxide (CO2) into fuel; these are called solar biofuels. 

Others – called electrofuels, synthetic fuels or e-fuels – are produced when CO2 captured from biomass is combined with hydrogen and converted into hydrocarbons through other processes, typically using electricity generated from renewable sources. 

Fourth-generation biofuels are technology- and CO2-intensive and expensive to produce. They also run up against public perception and legal limitations on genetically modified organisms, as well as concerns around biosafety and health.

What are the most common biofuels being used today?

Bioethanol is the most commonly used liquid biofuel in the world, followed by biodiesel. 

In 2024, global liquid biofuel production increased by 8% year-on-year, with the US (37%) and Brazil (22%) accounting for the largest overall share of production, according to the 2025 Statistical Review of World Energy from the Energy Institute. 

Other countries that saw a notable increase in production between 2023-24 were Sweden (62%), Canada (39%), China (30%), India (26%) and Argentina (24%).

Bioethanol is the most commonly used biofuel in the world, with a consumption rate of 1.1m barrels of oil equivalent per day in 2024, according to the report. This is closely followed by biodiesel, at 1m barrels of oil equivalent per day.  

In 2024, the US, Brazil and the EU accounted for nearly three-quarters of all biofuels consumed globally. However, while India’s biofuel demand grew by 38%, demand for biofuels in the EU fell by 11% in 2024, according to the review, echoing outlooks that show that middle-income countries are driving biofuel growth.

The chart below shows how biofuel production and consumption have changed since 2000, and how they are projected to change through 2034.

Liquid biofuel production and consumption in tonnes for top 10 producing and consuming countries, along with selected emerging economies, 2000-2034. Data: OECD-FAO Agricultural Outlook 2025-34 (2025). What are the main arguments for biofuels? 

From lowered oil imports and emissions through to boosting farm livelihoods, countries that have boosted biofuels programmes cite several benefits in biofuels’ favour. 

‘Renewable’ energy and lowered emissions

Biofuels are often described as “renewable” fuels, since crops can be grown over and over again.

In order to achieve this, crops for biofuels must be continuously replanted and harvested to meet energy demand. Growing crops – particularly in the monoculture plantations typically used for growing feedstocks – can require high use of fossil fuels, in the form of machinery and fertiliser. Furthermore, in the case of wood as a feedstock, regrowth can take decades.

While some biofuels offer significant emissions reductions, others, such as palm biodiesel, generate similar or sometimes higher emissions as fossil fuels when burned. However, ancillary emissions for biofuels are much smaller than for oil and gas operations.

One of the main cited benefits of biofuels is that plants capture CO2 from the atmosphere as they grow, potentially serving to mitigate emissions. However, several lifecycle-assessment studies have questioned just how much plants can offset emissions. These studies come up with varying estimates based on feedstock types, geography, production routes and methodology. 

This divergence is echoed in the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) Sixth Assessment Report (AR6), which points to “contrasting conclusions” even when similar bioenergy systems and conditions are analysed.

Per the report, there is “medium agreement” on the emissions-reduction potential of second-generation biofuels derived from wastes and residues by 2050. 

At the same time, the IPCC adds that “technical land availability does not imply that dedicated biomass production for bioenergy…is the most effective use of this land for mitigation”.

It also warns that larger-scale biofuel use “generally translates into higher risk for negative outcomes for greenhouse gas emissions, biodiversity, food security and a range of other sustainability criteria”. 

.cb-tweet{ width: 65%; box-shadow: 3px 3px 6px #d3d3d3; margin: auto; } .cb-tweet img{ border: solid 1.25px #333333; border-radius: 5px; } @media (max-width:650px){ .cb-tweet{ width:100%; } }

Along with the IPCC, many other groups and experts – including the UK’s Climate Change Commission – have called for a “biomass hierarchy”, pointing to a limited amount of sustainable bioenergy resources available and how best to prioritise their use.

Use in hard-to-abate sectors

In many countries, such as the US and UK, biofuels are part of a standard grade of diesel and petrol (gasoline) available at most fuel pumps.

Biofuels have also been the leading measure for decarbonising road transport in emerging economies, where electric vehicle systems were not as developed as in many western nations. 

According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), most new biofuel demand is coming from these countries, including Brazil, India and Indonesia. 

Biofuels are also one of the key options being explored to decarbonise the emissions-heavy, but “hard-to-abate”, sectors of aviation and shipping.

The AR6 report notes that the “faster-than-anticipated adoption of electromobility” has “partially shifted the debate” from using biofuels primarily in land transport towards using them in shipping and aviation. 

At the same time, experts question how this can be done sustainably, given the limited availability of advanced biofuels and the rising demand for them. 

Government reports – such as those released by the EU Commission – recognise that, in some circumstances, so-called sustainable aviation fuels (SAFs) could produce just as many emissions as fossil fuels when burned in order to power planes. 

However, SAFs do generally – although not always – have a lower overall “lifecycle” carbon footprint than petroleum-based jet fuel. This is due to the CO2 absorbed when growing plants for biofuels, or emissions that are avoided by diverting waste products to be used as fuels. 

Unlike the road sector, where “electrification is mature…aviation and shipping cannot be electrified so easily”, says Cian Delaney, fuels policy officer at the Brussels-based advocacy group Transport & Environment (T&E). 

According to a 2025 T&E briefing, the 2030 demand for biofuels from global shipping alone could require an area the “size of Germany”. Delaney tells Carbon Brief:

“In aviation in particular, where you still need some space to transition, you still need a certain amount of biofuels. But these biofuels should be advanced and waste biofuels derived from true waste and residues, and they are available in truly limited amounts, which is why, in parallel, we need to upscale the production of e-fuels [synthetic fuels derived from green hydrogen] for aviation.”

In February this year, more than 65 environmental organisations from countries including the US, Indonesia and the Netherlands wrote to the International Maritime Organization, urging its 176 member states to “exclude biofuels from the industry’s energy mix”. 

The organisations cited the “devastating impacts on climate, communities, forests and other ecosystems” from biofuels, cautioning that fuels such as virgin palm oil are often “fraud[ulently]” mislabelled as used cooking oil – a key feedstock for SAF.

Meanwhile, the AR6 report has “medium confidence” that heavy-duty trucks can be decarbonised through a combination of batteries and hydrogen or biofuels. And despite growing interest in the use of biofuels for aviation, it says, “demand and production volumes remain negligible compared to conventional fossil aviation fuels”.

Energy security and reducing import dependence

In many countries, such as India and Indonesia, biofuels are seen as a part of a suite of measures to increase energy security and lessen dependence on fossil-fuel imports from other countries. This imperative received increasing emphasis after the Covid-19 pandemic and Russia’s war on Ukraine. 

In developing countries, the “main motivation” behind biofuel policy is to find an alternative to excessive dependence on imported fossil fuels that are a “major drain” on foreign exchanges and subject to volatility and price shocks, says Prof Nandula Raghuram, professor of biotechnology at the Guru Gobind Singh University in New Delhi. 

Raghuram, who formerly chaired the International Nitrogen Initiative, tells Carbon Brief that, in order for developing countries to “earn those precious dollars to finance our petroleum imports”, they have to export “valuable primary commodities”, such as grain and vegetables, at the cost of nutritional self-reliance. He adds:

“And so we have to see the biofuel approach as not so much a proactive strategy, but as a sort of reactive strategy to use whatever domestic capacity we have to produce whatever domestic fuel, including biofuels, to reduce that much burden on the exchequer for imports.”

Boost to agriculture 

Many governments also see biofuels as an alternative income stream for farmers and a means to revitalise rural economies. 

An increasing demand for biofuels could, for example, offer farmers higher returns on their crops, attract industry and services to agrarian areas and help diversify farm incomes. 

In 2023, a report by the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) estimated that the liquid biofuel industry employed approximately 2.8 million people worldwide. 

The bulk of these jobs were in Latin America and Asia, where farming is more labour-intensive and relies on informal and seasonal employment. Brazil’s biofuel sector alone employed nearly one million people in 2023, according to the report. 
Meanwhile, North America and Europe accounted for only 12% and 6% of biofuel jobs in 2023, respectively, according to the report.

The chart below shows the number of jobs in the biofuel sector in the top 10 biofuel-producing countries.

Jobs relating to liquid biofuels in the top 10 producer countries in 2023. Source: International Renewable Energy Agency (Irena) and International Labor Organization (Irena-ILO) (2024). Chart: Carbon Brief.

Delaney points out that biofuel-related jobs account for less than 1% of all jobs in the EU, adding that the “most-consumed biofuel feedstocks” in the bloc are vegetable oils that are imported from countries such as Brazil and Indonesia. (See: How are countries using biofuels to meet their climate targets?)

He tells Carbon Brief:

“Despite strong biofuels mandates in the EU, the sector didn’t create as many jobs in the end for EU farmers, but, instead, benefited the big fuel suppliers and industry players.” 

What are some of the main criticisms of biofuels?

Despite their widespread use and increasing adoption, experts recognise that biofuels “may also carry significant risks” and cause impacts that can undermine their sustainability, if not managed carefully. 

Production emissions, land-use change and deforestation

The different chemical processes involved in making biofuels require varying amounts of energy and, therefore, the associated emissions depend on how “clean” a producer country’s energy mix is. 

At the same time, growing biofuel crops often relies on emissions-intensive fertilisers and pesticides to keep yields high and consistent. (See Carbon Brief’s detailed explainer on what the world’s reliance on fertilisers means for climate change.) 

Biofuel production processes, such as fermentation, also release CO2 and other greenhouse gases, including methane and nitrous oxide.

MIT’s Gurgel tells Carbon Brief that it is “relatively straightforward” to measure these direct emissions from biofuel production. 

However, given how different countries account for deforestation, tracking direct land-use change emissions related to biofuel production is slightly more challenging – although still possible, Gurgel says. These emissions can come from clearing forests or converting other land specifically for growing energy crops. 

For example, in many tropical forest countries, native rainforests and peatland have been cleared to grow oil palm for biodiesel or sugarcane for bioethanol. 

Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon for cultivating soyabeans and corn used to produce biofuel. Credit: Ton Koene / Alamy Stock Photo (2009)

According to one 2011 study by the Centre for International Forestry Research and World Agroforestry (CIFOR-ICRAF), it could take more than 200 years to reverse the carbon emissions caused by clearing peatland to grow palm oil.

Gurgel tells Carbon Brief: 

“What is really very hard – I would say impossible – to measure are the indirect impacts of biofuels on land.” 

Indirect land-use change occurs when a piece of land used to grow food crops is used instead for biofuels. This can, in turn, require deforestation somewhere else to produce the same amount of crops for food as the original piece of land. 

Indirect land-use change can mean a loss of natural ecosystems, with “significant implications for greenhouse gas emissions and land degradation”, according to a 2024 review paper. 

Gurgel explains:

“If you provoke a chain of reactions in the market, that can lead to expansion of cropland in another region of the world and then this can push the agricultural frontier further and cause some deforestation…It’s quite hard to know exactly what’s going to happen and those things are interactions in the market that are impossible to measure.” 

The “best that scientists can do” to determine if such a “biofuel shock” could indeed cause land-use change in a forest or grassland elsewhere “is try to project those emissions using models, or do very careful statistical work that will never be complete”, he adds. 

Delaney, from Transport and Environment, contends that there is enough scientific research to “show that indirect land-use change is real” and to quantify the expansion of “certain food and feedstocks into high-carbon stock” areas, such as forests. 

While this is “not easy” to do, he points to the European Commission’s indirect land-use change directive, the accompanying methodology and its scientific teams who study agricultural expansion rates. Delaney continues:

“What we all agree with at this point is that indirect land-use change exists, that it’s a problem, that certain feedstocks like palm and soya are particularly problematic from this perspective and that it is an issue that we need to tackle and capture in the best possible way.

“You cannot just be vague and descriptive without having proper figures behind it – and I think that’s something that at least the EU have tried and that they continue trying to implement. And I hope that, at the global level as well, this will be more recognised.”

Impacts on food, biodiversity and water security

Biofuel-boosting policies have been subjected to intense scrutiny during periods of global food-price spikes in 2008, 2011 and 2013. 

Following the spikes, critics attributed increasing biofuel production as a major factor in the near-doubling of cereal prices. Studies have shown that they played a more “modest” role in some of these spikes and a more substantial one in others. 
Severalexperts have linked food-price spikes to protests in north Africa and the Middle-East, including the Arab Spring. 

Protests in Egypt’s Tahrir Square in 2011, which many experts have linked to global food price spikes that were partially influenced by food crops being diverted to biofuel production. Credit: Barry Iverson / Alamy Stock Photo.

In more recent years, the “food vs fuel debate” has come back to the fore since the start of the war in Ukraine in 2022. 

This was in part due to the world’s reliance on Ukraine and Russia’s food and energy systems – particularly some of the most food-insecure countries, who had to contend with record-high food prices that peaked in March 2022, but still persist. The war also saw heightened calls for the US and EU to overturn biofuel-boosting policies to free up land to increase domestic food production and bring down food prices.

In developing countries, such as India, the use of cereals and oils to make biofuels while large sections of the population still lack access to adequate nutrition has attracted criticism from experts.

While first-generation biofuels rely on fertilisers to guarantee consistently high yields, second-generation biofuels could directly compete with feed for livestock or their return to soil as nutrients. 

According to a 2013 report by the panel of scientists that advises the UN Committee on World Food Security (CFS):

“All crops compete for the same land or water, labour, capital, inputs and investment, and there are no current magic non-food crops that can ensure more harmonious biofuel production on marginal lands.”

This competition, along with clearing forests and other ecosystems for cropland, has consequences not just for emissions, but also for biodiversity, water and nutrients.

According to one 2021 review paper, local species richness and abundance were 37% and 49% lower, respectively, in places where first-generation biofuel crops were being grown than in places with primary vegetation. Additionally, it found that soya, wheat, maize and palm oil had the “worst effects” on local biodiversity, with Asia and central and South America being the most-impacted regions.

Soya beans being harvested near Mato Grosso in Brazil. Credit: Paulo Fridman / Alamy Stock Photo.

Biofuels’ impact on water resources, similarly, is highly crop- and location-specific. 

For instance, growing a “thirsty” crop such as sugarcane in Brazil could have minimal impacts on local water resources, due to the region’s abundant rainfall. But in drought-prone India, experts have estimated that a litre of sugarcane ethanol requires more than 2,500 litres of water to produce and relies entirely on irrigation. Research has also found that nearly half of China’s maize crop requires irrigation to grow. 

According to agricultural economist Dr Shweta Saini, meeting India’s 2025-26 biofuels target will require 275m tonnes of sugarcane, 6m tonnes of maize and 5.5m tonnes of rice. According to one 2020 study cited by Bloomberg columnist David Fickling, increasing sugarcane production to meet India’s biofuel targets “could consume an additional 348bn cubic metres of water…around twice what is used by every city” in the country.

Prof Raghuram tells Carbon Brief:

“Water resources are drying up everywhere in the country and by incentivising, through policy, a water-guzzling industry like this, we are inviting a sustainability crisis.”

‘Feedstock crunch’

Another concern surrounding biofuels is that there may not be enough supply to go around to meet rising demand. The IEA described the potential shortfall as a “feedstock supply crunch” in a 2022 report.

Fuels derived from the most commonly used waste and residues, in particular, could be approaching supply limits, the IEA warns, as these fuels satisfy both sustainability and feedstock policy objectives in the US and EU. 

Consumption of vegetable oil for biofuel production is expected to soar by 46% over 2022-27, the report says. Meanwhile, the world is estimated to “nearly exhaust 100% of supplies” of used cooking oil and animal fats within the decade. 

For the world to stay on a net-zero trajectory, “a more than three times production increase” would be required, the report adds. It warns that if the limited availability of second-generation feedstocks continues unchanged, “the potential for biofuels to contribute to global decarbonisation efforts could be undermined”.

The chart below shows the biofuel demand share of global crop production from 2022-27.

Total biofuel production by feedstock dedicated to producing biofuels, IEA estimates for 2021 and 2027. Data: IEA (2022). Chart: Carbon Brief How are countries using biofuels to meet their climate targets?

Broadly, biofuel policies are divided into two categories. 

Technology “push” policies focus on the research and development of new technologies and include measures such as research funding, pilot plants and government support for commercialising nascent technologies. 

Meanwhile, market “pull” policies drive demand for existing and emerging biofuels through measures such as “biofuel blending mandates” – where countries prescribe a certain percentage of biofuel with fossil fuels – and tax breaks for producers and vehicle owners.

US

The US Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) is the world’s largest existing biofuel programme. Its mandates are keenly watched and contested by the country’s farm and petroleum lobbies. 

Under RFS, the US Environmental Protection Agency sets out minimum levels of biofuels that must be blended into the US’s transport, heating and jet fuel supplies.

A truck transporting corn at an ethanol plant in Iowa, USA. Credit: Wang Ying / Alamy Stock Photo (2019)

Under the policy, oil refiners can either blend mandated volumes of biofuels into the nation’s fuel supply or buy credits – called Renewable Identification Numbers (RINS) – from those that do.

While the programme sets out emissions reduction targets, the environmental impacts of cropland expansion and monoculture driven by the policy have been cause for concern by experts. 

According to one 2022 study, the RFS programme increased US fertiliser use by 3-8% each year between 2008-16 and caused enough domestic emissions from land-use change that the carbon intensity of corn ethanol was “no less than that of gasoline and likely at least 24% higher”. Additionally, the programme’s impacts on biodiversity have not yet been fully assessed.

In June 2025, the Trump administration announced plans to expand the biofuel mandate to a “record 24.02bn gallons” next year – an 8% increase from its 2025 target – while seeking to discourage imported biofuels. 

EU

In the EU, policymakers have promoted biofuels since 2003 to reduce emissions in the transport system. As part of the EU’s Renewable Energy Directive (RED), biofuels have been explicitly linked to emissions targets.

Under the current iteration of RED (REDIII) – revised as part of the EU’s Fit for 55 package – EU countries are required to either achieve a share of 29% of renewable energy in transport or to reduce the emissions intensity of transport fuels by 14.5%. Additionally, it sets out a sub-target for “advanced biofuels” of 5.5% and excludes the use of food and feed-based biofuels in aviation and shipping.

In 2015, the European Commission acknowledged that the indirect land-use change emissions of first-generation biofuels could “fully negate” any emission savings by biofuels. The commission capped the use of first-generation biofuels in each member country at 7% of all energy used in transport by 2020, but did not announce plans to phase them out.

As of 2021, nearly 60% of all biofuels used in the EU were still made from food and feed crops, according to analysis by Oxfam. While the latest RED legislation continues to push for the use of advanced and waste biofuels, campaigners warn that a lack of clear definitions could increase the risk of “loopholes” and fraud, exacerbated by increased demand. 

T&E’s Delaney tells Carbon Brief:

“You’re putting a lot of pressure on the land – you might require a lot of pesticides and irrigation – and there is not even enough land in Europe for this. How can you make sure true sustainability safeguards are in place so that you’re not actually driving additional demand for land in [biodiverse countries such as] Brazil?”

Brazil

Brazil has the world’s oldest biofuels mandate, dating back to the 1970s, established in a bid to insulate the country from expensive oil imports. 

In 2017, Brazil announced a state policy called RenovaBio that set out national carbon intensity reduction targets for transport, decided biofuel mandates and created an open market for biofuel decarbonisation carbon reduction credits called CBIO. 

In October 2024, Brazil enacted a “Fuels of the Future” law that replaced RenovaBio, with president Lula declaring that “Brazil will lead the world’s largest energy revolution”. The law aims to boost biofuel and sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) use, increasing biodiesel blending mandates by 1% every year starting in 2025 until it reaches 20% by March 2030.

Biofuels now account for 22% of the energy that fuels transport in Brazil and its ethanol market is “second in size only” to the US. 

In June this year, Brazil announced that the country was increasing its biofuel blending mandates from 1 August in a bid to make the country “gasoline self-sufficient for the first time in 15 years”, reported Reuters. 

Indonesia

As the world’s biggest palm oil producer, Indonesia has continued to raise its biodiesel blending mandates to meet its domestic energy needs. 

The country first introduced mandatory biodiesel blending in 2008, at 2.5%. The mandate is currently at 40% in 2025 and, starting next year, could go up to 50% with an eventual goal of 100%. 

While Indonesia’s president Prabowo Subianto has stated that implementing 50% blending could save the country $20bn in reduced diesel imports, the move would need an estimated 2.3m hectares of land, including protected forests, resulting in the “country’s largest-ever deforestation project”, according to Mongabay. 

It could also compete with palm oil meant for domestic and international food markets, impacting already soaring prices and signalling the “end of cheap palm oil”.

India

India has quickly joined the ranks of major biofuel producers, due to high-level political support, policies and a diversity of feedstocks. In 2023, India launched the Global Biofuels Alliance as one of its key priorities of its G20 presidency. 

India’s prime minister Narendra Modi holds hands with USA’s Joe Biden and Brazil’s Lula da Silva at the launch of the Global Biofuels Alliance in 2023. Credit: Planetpix / Alamy Stock Photo (2023)

Biofuel mandates are outlined in the country’s National Policy on Biofuels, first published in 2009 and subsequently amended in 2018 and 2022. In 2022, India achieved its 10% ethanol blending target ahead of schedule and is pursuing a 20% blending target by 2025, as well as a 5% biodiesel blending target by 2030. 

India’s rapid biofuel push, however, has been criticised by food security experts as hunger levels rise, for its impact on endemic rainforests and, most recently, by vehicle owners for the impact of blended fuel on car engines.

Prof Raghuram says: 

“From a sheer governance angle and sustainability angle, there are a lot of compromises being made to somehow push this whole thing. Even the land available in India is shrinking, as various reforms and dilution of environmental safeguards in the last 10 years have made it relatively easier to convert farm and forest land for non-agricultural purposes.”

China

China developed its first biofuel policies over 20 years ago and is one of the world’s biggest biofuel producers.

In 2017, China announced a new mandate expanding the use of fuel including bioethanol from 11 trial provinces to the entire country by 2020. However, Reuters and South China Morning Post reported that this was suspended in 2020. Only 15 provinces still maintain biofuel mandates, according to the US Department of Agriculture, which notes that a “lack of meaningful support for domestic biofuel consumption while aggressively promoting electric vehicles indicates a strategic choice to pursue transportation decarbonisation through electrification rather than liquid biofuels”.

At the same time, biofuel production in China grew by 30% in 2024, according to the Energy Institute’s Statistical Review.

While most of China’s biofuel production is grain-based, tax incentives for ethanol production have been gradually phased out and alternative biofuels have been incentivised, according to the IEA. China is currently piloting a scheme to increase biodiesel consumption at home, even as it exports biodiesel and used cooking oil to the EU and US.

How could climate change impact biofuel production?

Despite the well-documented impacts of climate change-induced extreme weather on land, agriculture and forests, there is currently little scientific literature examining how continued warming will impact global biofuel production. 

One 2020 study found that bioethanol availability globally could drop – by 23% under a “very high emissions scenario” and by 4.3% under a “low emissions” scenario by 2060 – “if climate change risk is not adequately mitigated” and corn continues to be the dominant feedstock. 

The study “encourages” changing out corn for switchgrass as a key source of bioethanol.  

A farmer in southern China checks the growth of crop in his flooded corn field. Credit: ImagineChina / Alamy Stock Photo (2014)

Another 2021 study examining the viability of China’s planned biofuel targets estimated that energy crop yields in China in the 2050s will decrease significantly compared to the 2010s, due to the impacts of climate change. 

It found that climate change is expected to have a “substantial impact” on the land available for biofuel production in the 2050s, under both scenarios used in the study.

Gurgel, from MIT, tells Carbon Brief that it is “very hard to take into account how much climate change will damage bio-energy production” at this point, given the uncertainty of what emissions pathway the world will follow. 

While most climate models “do a very good job” at forecasting average temperature change in the future, they do an “average job” at projecting rainfall change, or how many extreme weather events countries will see in the future, he says. 

This is important because many biofuel crops, such as sugarcane and palm oil, are water-intensive and thrive in regions with abundant rainfall, but yields may fail in drier parts of the world that could see more drought. 

Given this “cascade of uncertainties”, he continues, “we don’t have a clear picture of how bad the future [of agriculture] will be – we just know it will be more challenging than today”.

Delaney, meanwhile, asks whether investing in biofuels, which will be impacted by climate change, is a “good investment” for the long term. He tells Carbon Brief:

“I think these are the questions that we need to ask ourselves when we see – not just in India, but Indonesia, Brazil, everywhere around the world right now – this growing appetite for biofuels. Can we really keep the promises that we made at the end of the day?”

The post Q&A: How countries are using biofuels to meet their climate targets appeared first on Carbon Brief.

10-16 * 13:00 - Learning and Education (franco)

The first-ever international conference on the contentious topic of “overshoot” was held last week in a palace in the small town of Laxenburg in Austria.

The three-day conference brought together nearly 200 researchers and legal experts to discuss future temperature pathways where the Paris Agreement’s “aspirational” target to limit global warming to 1.5C is met “from above, rather than below”.

Overshoot pathways are those which exceed the 1.5C limit – before being brought back down again through techniques that remove carbon from the atmosphere.

The conference explored both the feasibility of overshoot pathways and the legal frameworks that could help deliver them.

Researchers also discussed the potential consequences of a potential rise – and then fall – of global temperatures on climate action, society and the Earth’s climate systems.

Speaking during a plenary session, Prof Joeri Rogelj, a professor of climate science and policy at Imperial College London, said that “moving into a world where we exceed 1.5C and have to manage overshoot” was an exercise in “managing failure”. 

He said that it was “essential” that this failure was acknowledged, explaining that this would help set out the need to “minimise and manage” the situation and clarify the implications for “near-term action” and “long-term [temperature] reversal”.

Below, Carbon Brief draws together some of the key talking points, new research and discussions that emerged from the event.

• Defining overshoot
• Mitigation ambition and 1.5C viability
• Carbon removal
• Impacts of overshoot
• Adaptation
• Legal implications and loss and damage
• Communication challenges and next steps

Defining overshoot

The study of temperature overshoot has grown in recent years as the prospects of limiting global temperature rise to 1.5C have dwindled.

Conference organiser Dr Carl-Friedrich Schleussner – a senior research scholar at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) – explained the event was designed to bring together different research communities working on a “new field of science”. 

He told Carbon Brief:

“If we look at [overshoot] in isolation, we may miss important parts of the bigger picture. That’s why we also set out the conference with very broad themes and a very interdisciplinary approach.”

The conference was split between eight conference streams: mitigation ambition; carbon dioxide removal (CDR); Earth system responses; climate impacts; tipping points; adaptation; loss and damage; and legal implications. 

There was also a focus on how to communicate the concept of overshoot.

In simple English, “overshoot” means to go past or beyond a limit. But, in climate science, the term implies both a failure to meet a target – as well as subsequent action to correct that failure. 

Today, the term is most often deployed to describe future temperature trajectories that exceed the Paris Agreement’s 1.5C limit – and then come back down.

(In the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC’s) fifth assessment cycle, completed in 2014, the term was used to describe a potential rise and then fall of CO2 concentrations above levels recommended to meet long-term climate goals. A recent “conceptual” review of overshoot noted this was because, at the time, CO2 concentrations were the key metric used to contextualise emissions reductions). 

The plot below provides an illustration of three overshoot pathways. The most pronounced pathway sees global temperatures rise significantly above the 1.5C limit – before eventually falling back down again as carbon dioxide is pulled from the atmosphere at scale. 

In the second and third pathways, global temperature rise breaches the limit by a smaller margin, before either falling enough just to stabilise around 1.5C, or dropping more dramatically due to larger-scale carbon removals.

Credit: Amended from Schleussner et al (2024).

In an opening address to delegates, Prof Jim Skea, who is the current chair of the IPCC, acknowledged the scientific interpretation of overshoot was not intuitive to non-experts.

“The IPCC has mainly used two words in relation to overshoot – “exceeding” and “limiting”. To a lay person, these can sound like opposites. Yet we know that a single emissions pathway can both exceed 1.5C in the near term and limit warming to 1.5C in the long term.”

Noting that different research communities were using the term differently, Skea urged researchers to be precise with terminology and stick to the IPCC’s definition of overshoot:

“We should give some thought to communication and keep this as simple as possible. When I look at texts, I hear more poetic words like “surpassing” and “breaching”. I would urge you to keep the range of terms as small as possible and make sure that we’re absolutely using them consistently.” 

In the glossary for its latest assessment cycle, AR6, the IPCC defines “overshoot” pathways as follows:

IIASA’s Schleussner stressed that not all pathways that go beyond 1.5C qualify as overshoot pathways:

“The most important understanding is that overshoot is not any pathway that exceeds 1.5C. An overshoot pathway is specific to this being a period of exceedance. It is going to come back down below 1.5C.”

Back to top

Mitigation ambition and 1.5C viability

Perhaps the most prominent topic during the conference was the implications of overshoot for global ambition to cut carbon emissions and the viability of the 1.5C limit.

Opening the conference, IIASA director general Prof Hans Joachim Schellnhuber shared his personal view that “1.5C is dead, 2C is in agony and 3C is looming”.

In a pre-recorded keynote speech, Ralph Regenvanu, Vanuatu’s minister for climate change, called for a rejection of the “normalisation of overshoot” and argued that “we must treat 1.5C as the absolute limit that it is” and avoid backsliding. He added:

“Minimising peak warming must be our lodestar, because every tenth of a degree matters.”

Prof Skea opened his keynote with some theology:

“I’m going to start with the prayer of St Augustine as he struggled with his youthful longings: ‘Lord grant me chastity and continence, but not yet.’ And it does seem that this is the way that the world as a whole is thinking about 1.5C: ‘Lord, limit warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, but not yet.’”

Referencing the “lodestar” mentioned by Regenvanu, Skea warned that it is light years away and, “unless we act with a sense of urgency, [1.5C is] likely to remain just as remote”.

Speaking to Carbon Brief on the sidelines of the conference, Skea added:

“We are almost certain to exceed 1.5C and the viability of 1.5C is now much more referring to the long-term potential to limit it through overshoot.”

Schleussner told Carbon Brief that the framing of 1.5C in the conference is “one that further solidifies 1.5C as the long-term limit and, therefore, provides a backstop against the idea of reducing or backsliding on targets”.

If warming is going to surpass 1.5C, the next question is when temperatures are going to be brought back down again, Schleussner added, noting that there has been no “direct” guidance on this from climate policy:

“The [Paris Agreement’s] obligation to “pursue efforts” [to limit global temperature rise by 1.5C] points to doing it as fast as possible. Scientifically, we can determine what this means – and that would be this century. But there’s no clear language that gives you a specific date. It needs to be a period of overshoot – that is clear – and it should be as short as possible.”

In a parallel session on the “highest possible mitigation ambition under overshoot”, Prof Joeri Rogelj, professor of climate science and policy at Imperial College London, outlined how the recent ruling from the International Court of Justice (ICJ) provides guidance to countries on the level of ambition in their climate pledges under the Paris Agreement, known as “nationally determined contributions” (NDCs). He explained:

“[The ruling] highlights that the level of NDC ambition is not purely discretionary to a state and that every state must do its utmost to ensure its NDC reflects the highest possible ambition to meet the Paris Agreement long-term temperature goal.”

Rogelj presented some research – due to be published in the journal Environmental Research Letters – on translating the ICJ’s guidance “into a framework that can help us to assess whether an NDC indeed is following a standard of conduct that can represent the highest level of ambition”. He showed some initial results on how the first two rounds of NDCs measure up against three “pillars” covering domestic, international and implementation considerations. 

In the same session, Dr Oliver Geden, senior fellow and head of the climate policy and politics research cluster at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs and vice-chair of IPCC Working Group III, warned that the concept of returning temperatures back down to 1.5C after an overshoot is “not a political project yet”.

He explained that there is “no shared understanding that, actually, the world is aiming for net-negative”, where emissions cuts and CDR together mean that more carbon is being taken out of the atmosphere than is being added. This is necessary to achieve a decline in global temperatures after surpassing 1.5C. 

This lack of understanding includes developed countries, which “you would probably expect to be the frontrunners”, Geden said, noting that Denmark is the “only developed country that has a quantified net-negative target” of emission reductions of 110% in 2050, compared to 1990 levels. (Finland also has a net-negative target, while Germany announced its intention to set one last year. In addition, a few small global-south countries, such as Panama, Suriname and Bhutan, have already achieved net-negative.)

Geden pondered whether developed countries are a “little bit wary to commit to going to net-negative territory because they fear that once they say -110%, some countries will immediately demand -130% or -150%” to pay back a larger carbon debt.

Back to top

Carbon removal

To achieve a decline in global temperatures after an initial breach of 1.5C would require the world to reach net-negative emissions overall.

There is a wide range of potential techniques for removing CO2 from the atmosphere, such as afforestation, direct air capture and bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS). Captured carbon must be locked away indefinitely in order to be effective at reducing global temperatures.

However, despite its importance in achieving net-negative emissions, there are “huge knowledge gaps around overshoot and carbon dioxide removal”, Prof Skea told Carbon Brief. He continued: 

“As it’s very clear from the themes of this conference, we don’t altogether understand how the Earth would react in taking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. We don’t understand the nature of the irreversibilities. And we don’t understand the effectiveness of CDR techniques, which might themselves be influenced by the level of global warming, plus all the equity and sustainability issues surrounding using CDR techniques.”

Skea notes that the seventh assessment cycle of the IPCC, which is just getting underway, will “start to fill these knowledge gaps without prejudging what the appropriate policy response should be”. 

Prof Kristie Ebi, Dr Jonathan Donges, Prof Debra Roberts, Prof Deliang Chen, Dr Matt Gidden, Dr Annika Högner and Dr Keywan Riahi at a plenary session at the Overshoot Conference. Credit: IIASA

Prof Nebojsa Nakicenovic, an IIASA distinguished emeritus research scholar, told Carbon Brief that his “major concern” was whether there would be an “asymmetry” in how the climate would respond to large-scale carbon removal, compared to its response to carbon emissions. 

In other words, he explained, would global temperatures respond to carbon removal “on the way down” in the same way they did “on the way up” to the world’s carbon emissions.

Nakicenovic noted that overshoot requires a change in focus to approaching the 1.5C limit “from above, rather than below”.

Schleussner made a similar point to Carbon Brief:

“We may fail to pursue [1.5C] from below, but it doesn’t relieve us from the obligation to then pursue it from above. I think that’s also a key message and a very strong overarching message that’s going to come out from the conference that we see…that pursuing an overshoot and then decline trajectory is both an obligation, but it also is well rooted in science.”

A common refrain throughout the conference was that CDR should not be pursued at the cost of efforts to cut carbon emissions. In a parallel session, Dr Geden noted that “we have to shift CDR from being seen as a barrier to ambition to an enabler of even higher ambition, but not doing that by betting on ever more CDR”.

Among the research presented in the parallel sessions on CDR was a recent study by Dr Jay Fuhrman from the Joint Global Change Research Institute at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory on the regional differences in capacity to deploy large-scale carbon removal. Ruben Prütz, from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, presented on the risks to biodiversity from large-scale land-based CDR, which – in some cases – could have a larger impact than warming itself.

In another talk, the University of Oxford’s Dr Rupert Stuart-Smith explored how individual countries are “depending very heavily on [carbon] removals to meet their climate targets”. Stuart-Smith was a co-author on an “initial commentary” on the legal limits of CDR, published in 2023. This has been followed up with a “much more detailed legal analysis”, which should be published “very soon”, he added.

Back to top

Impacts of overshoot

Since the Paris Agreement and the call for the IPCC to produce a special report on 1.5C, research into the impacts of warming at the aspirational target has become commonplace. 

Similarly, there is an abundance of research into the potential impacts at other thresholds, such as 2C, 3C and beyond. 

However, there is comparatively little research into how impacts are affected by overshoot.

The conference included talks on some published research into overshoot, such as the chances of irreversible glacier loss and lasting impacts to water resources. There were also talks on work that is yet to be formally published, such as the risks of triggering interacting tipping points under overshoot.

Speaking in a morning plenary, Prof Debra Roberts, a coordinating lead author on the IPCC’s forthcoming special report on climate change and cities and a former co-chair of Working Group II, highlighted the need to consider the implications of different durations and peak temperatures of overshoot.

For example, she explained, it is “important to know” whether the impacts of “overshoot for 10 years at 0.2C above 1.5C are the same as 20 years at 0.1C of overshoot”.

Discussions during the conference noted that the answer may be different depending on the type of impact. For heat extremes, the peak temperature may be the key factor, while the length of overshoot will be more relevant for cumulative impacts that build up over time, such as sea level rise.

Similarly, if warming is brought back down to 1.5C after overshoot, what happens next is also significant – whether global temperature is stabilised or net-negative emissions continue and warming declines further. Prof Schleussner told Carbon Brief:

“For example, with coastal adaptation to sea level rise, the question of how fast and how far we bring temperatures back down again will be decisive in terms of the long-term outlook. Knowing that if you stabilise that around 1.5C, we might commit two metres of sea level rise, right? So, the question of how far we can and want to go back down again is decisive for a long-term perspective.”

One of the eight themes of the conference centred specifically on the reversibility or irreversibility of climate impacts. 

In his opening speech, Vanuatu’s Ralph Regenvanu warned that “overshooting 1.5C isn’t a temporary mistake, it is a catalyst for inescapable, irreversible harm”. He continued:

“No level of finance can pull back the sea in our lifetimes or our children’s. There is no rewind button on a melted glacier. There is no time machine for an extinct species. Once we cross these tipping points, no amount of later ‘cooling’ can restore our sacred reefs, it cannot regrow the ice that already vanished and it cannot bring back the species or the cultures erased by the rising tides.”

As an example of a “deeply, deeply irreversible” impact, Dr Samuel Lüthi, a postdoctoral research fellow in the Institute of Social and Preventive Medicine at the University of Bern, presented on how overshoot could affect heat-related mortality.

Using mortality data from 850 locations across the world, Lüthi showed how projections under a pathway where warming overshoots 1.5C by 0.1-0.3C, before returning to 1.5C by 2100 has 15% more heat-related deaths in the 21st century than a pathway with less than 0.1C of overshoot.

His findings also suggested that “10 years of 1.6C is very similar [in terms of impacts] to five years of 1.7C”.

Extreme heat also featured in a talk by Dr Yi-Ling Hwong, a research scholar at IIASA, on the implications of using solar geoengineering to reduce peak temperatures during overshoot. 

She showed that a world where a return to 1.5C had been achieved through geoengineering would see different impacts from a world where 1.5C was reached through cutting emissions. For example, in her modelling study, while geoengineering restores rainfall levels for some regions in the global north, significant drying “is observed in many regions in the global south”.

Similarly, a world geoengineered to 1.5C would see extreme nighttime heat in some tropical regions that is more severe than in a 2C world with no geoengineering, Hwong added.

In short, she said, “this implies the risk of creating winners and losers” under solar geoengineering and “raises concerns about equity and accountability that need to be considered”.  

After describing how overshoot features in the outlines of the forthcoming AR7 reports in his opening speech, Prof Skea told Carbon Brief that he expects a “surge of papers” on overshoot in time to be included.

But it was important to emphasise that a “lot of the science that people have been carrying out is relevant within or without an overshoot”, he added: 

“At points in the future, we are not going to know whether we’re in an overshoot world or just a high-emissions world, for example. So a lot of the climate research that’s been done is relevant regardless of overshoot. But overshoot is a new kind of dimension because of this issue of focus on 1.5C and concerns about its viability.”

Back to top

Adaptation

The implications of overshoot temperature pathways for efforts to prepare cities, countries and citizens for the impacts of climate change remains an under-researched field.

Speaking in a plenary, Prof Kristie Ebi – a professor at the University of Washington’s Center for Health and the Global Environment – described research into adaptation and overshoot as “nascent”. However, she stressed that preparing society for the impacts associated with overshoot pathways was as important as bringing down emissions. 

She told Carbon Brief that there were “all kinds of questions” about how to approach “effective” adaptation under an overshoot pathway, explaining:

“At the moment, adaptation is primarily assuming a continual increase in global mean surface temperature. If there is going to be a peak – and, of course, we don’t know what that peak is – then how do you start planning? Do you change your planning? There are places, for instance when thinking about hard infrastructure, [where overshoot] may result in a change in your plan.”

IIASA’s Schleussner told Carbon Brief that the scientific community was only just “beginning to appreciate” the need to understand and “quantify” the implications of different overshoot pathways on adaptation. 

In a parallel session, Dr Elisabeth Gilmore, associate professor in environmental engineering and public policy at Carleton University in Canada, made the case for overshoot modelling pathways to take greater account of political considerations.

“Not just, but especially, in situations of overshoot, we need to start thinking about this as much as a physical process as a socio-political process…If we don’t do this, we are really missing out on some key uncertainties.”

Current scenarios used in climate research – including the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways and Representative Concentration Pathways – are “a bit quiet” when it comes to thinking about governance, institutions and peace and conflict, Gilmore said. She added:

“Political institutions, legitimacy and social cohesion continue to shift over time and this is really going to shape how much we can mitigate, how much we adapt and especially how we would recover when adding in the dimension of overshoot.” 

Gilmore argued that, from a social perspective, adaptation needs are greatest “before the peak” of temperature rise – because this is when society can build the resilience to “get to the other side”. She said:

“Orthodoxy in adaptation [research] that you always want to plan for the worst [in the context of adaptation, peak temperature rise]… But we don’t really know what this peak is going to be – and we know that the politics and the social systems are much more messy.”

Dr Marta Mastropietro, a researcher at Politecnico di Milano in Italy, presented the preliminary results of a study that used emulators – simple climate models – to explore how human development might be impacted under low, medium and high overshoot pathways. 

Mastropietro noted how, under all overshoot scenarios studied, both the drop to the human development index (HDI) – an index which incorporates health, knowledge and standard of living – and uncertainty increases as the peak temperature increases.

However, she said “the most important takeaway” from the preliminary results was around society’s constrained ability to recover from damage. 

“This percentage of damages that are absorbed is always less than 50%. So, even in the most optimistic scenarios of overshoot, we will not be able to reabsorb these damages, not even half of them. And this is considering a damage function which does not consider irreversible impacts like sea level rise.”

Meanwhile, Dr Inês Gomes Marques from the University of Lisboa in Portugal, shared the results of an as-yet-unpublished study investigating whether the Lisbon metropolitan area holds enough public spaces to offer heatwave relief to the population under overshoot scenarios. The 1,900 “climate refugia” counted by researchers included schools, museums and churches.

Marques noted that most of the population were found to be within one kilometre of a  “climate refugia” – but noted that “nuances” would need to be added to the analysis, including a function which considers the limited mobility of older citizens. 

She explained that the researchers were aiming to “establish a framework” for this type of analysis that would be relevant to both the science community and municipalities tasked with adaptation. She added:

“The main point is that we need to think about this now, because we will face some big problems if we don’t”.

Delegates attend a poster session at the Overshoot Conference. Credit: IIASA

Back to top

Legal implications and loss and damage

Significant attention was given throughout the conference to the legal considerations of the breach of – and impetus to return to – the Paris Agreement’s 1.5C warming limit. 

This included discussions about how the international legal frameworks should be updated for an “overshoot” world where countries would need to pursue “net-negative” strategies to bring temperatures down to 1.5C. 

There were also discussions around governance of geoengineering technologies and the fairness and justice considerations that arise from the real-world impacts of breached targets. 

The conference was being held just months after the ICJ’s advisory opinion that limiting temperature increase to 1.5C should be considered countries’ “primary temperature goal”.

IIASA’s Shleussner told Carbon Brief that the opinion provided “clarity” that countries had a “clear obligation to bring warming back to 1.5C”. He added:

“We may fail to pursue it from below, but it doesn’t relieve us from the obligation to then pursue it from above.”

Prof Lavanya Rajamani, professor of international environmental law at the University of Oxford, insisted that “1.5C was very much alive and well in the legal world”, but noted there were “very significant limits” to what could be achieved through the UN Framework Convention for Climate Change (UNFCCC) – the global treaty for coordinating the response to climate change – both today and in the future.

Summarising discussions around how countries can be pushed to deliver the “highest possible ambition” in future climate plans submitted to the UN, Rajamani urged delegates to be “tempered in [its] expectations of what we’re going to get from the international regime”. She added:

“Changing the narratives and practices at the national level are far more likely to filter up to the international level than trying to do it from a top-down perspective.” 

In a parallel session, Prof Christina Voigt, a professor of international law at the University of Oslo, pointed out that overshoot would require countries to aspire beyond “net-zero emissions” as “the end climate goal” in national plans. 

Stabilising emissions at “net-zero” by mid-century would result in warming above 1.5C, she explained, whereas “net-negative” emissions are required to deliver overshoot pathways that return temperatures to below the Paris Agreement’s aspirational limit. She continued:

“We will need frontrunners. Leaders, states, regions would need to start considering negative-emission benchmarks in their climate policies and laws from around mid-century. There will be an expectation that developed country parties take the lead and explore this ‘negativity territory’.”

Voigt added that it was “critical” that nations at the UNFCCC create a “shared understanding” that 1.5C remains the “core target” for nations to aim for, even after it has been exceeded. One possible place for such discussions could be at the 2028 global stocktake, she noted.

She said there would need to be more regulation to scale up CDR in a way that addresses “environmental and social challenges” and an effort to “recalibrate policies and measures” – including around carbon markets – to deliver net-negative outcomes. 

In a presentation exploring governance of solar radiation management (SRM), Ewan White, a DPhil student in environmental law at the University of Oxford, said the ICJ’s recent advisory opinion could be interpreted to be “both for and against” solar geoengineering.

Countries tasked with drawing up global rules around SRM in an overshoot world would need to take a “holistic approach to environmental law”, White said. In his view, this should take into account international legal obligations beyond the Paris Agreement and consider issues of intergenerational equity, biodiversity protection and nations’ duty to cooperate.

Dr Shonali Pachauri, research group leader at IIASA, provided an overview of the equity and justice implications that might arise in an overshoot world.

First, she said that delays to emissions reductions today are “shifting the burden” to future generations and “others within this generation” – increasing the need for “corrective justice” and potential loss-and-damage payments.

Second, she said that adaptation efforts would need to increase – which, in turn, would “threaten mitigation ambition” given “constrained decision-making”.

Finally, she pointed to resource consumption issues that might arise in a world of overshoot:

“The different technologies that one might use for CDR often depend on the use of land, water, other materials – and this, of course, then means competing with many other uses [of resources].”

A separate stream focused on loss and damage. Session chair Dr Sindra Sharma, international policy lead at the Pacific Islands Climate Action Network, noted that the concept of loss and damage was “fundamentally transformed” by overshoot – adding there were “deep issues of justice and equity”. 

However, Sharma said that the literature on loss and damage “has not yet deeply engaged with the specific concept of overshoot” despite it being “an important, interconnected issue”.

Sessions on loss and damage explored the existence of “hard social limits” under future overshoot scenarios, insurance and the need to bring more factors into assessments of habitability, including biophysical and social-economic constraints.

Back to top

Communication challenges and next steps

At the conference, scientists and legal experts collaborated on a series of statements that summarised discussions at the conference – one for each research theme and an overarching umbrella statement.

IIASA’s Schleussner told Carbon Brief that the statements represented a “key outcome of the conference” that could provide a “framework” to guide future research.

Nevertheless, he noted that statements are a “work in progress” and set to be “further refined” following feedback from experts not able to attend the conference. 

At the time of going to press, the overarching conference statement read as follows:

“Global warming above 1.5C will increase irreversible and unacceptable losses and damages to people, societies and the environment. 

“It is imperative to minimise both the maximum warming and duration of overshoot above 1.5C to reduce additional risks of human rights violations and causing irreversible social, ecological and Earth system changes including transgressing tipping points.

“This is required by international law and possible by removing CO2 from the atmosphere and further reducing remaining greenhouse emissions.”

Conference organisers also pointed delegates to an open call for research on “pathways and consequences of overshoot” in the journal Environmental Research Letters. The special issue will be guest edited by a number of scientists who played a key role in the conference.

Meanwhile, communications experts at the conference discussed the challenges inherent in conveying overshoot science to non-experts, noting potential confusion around the word “overshoot” and the difficulties in explaining that the 1.5C limit, while breached, was still a goal.

Holly Simpkin, communications manager at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, urged caution when communicating overshoot science to the general public:

“I don’t know whether ‘overshoot’ is an effective communication framing. It is an important scientific question, but when it comes to near-term action and the requirements that an ambitious overshoot pathway would ask of us, emissions are what are in our control.

“We could spend 10 more years defining this and, actually, it’s quite complex…I think it’s better to be honest about that and to try to be more simple in that frame of communication, knowing that this community is doing a wealth of work that provides a technical basis for those discussions.”

Back to top

Experts: The key ‘unknowns’ of overshooting the 1.5C global-warming limit

Global temperature

|

08.10.25

State of the climate: 2025 on track to be second or third warmest year on record

Global temperature

|

29.07.25

Guest post: Why 2024’s global temperatures were unprecedented, but not surprising

Global temperature

|

18.06.25

Mapped: How climate change affects extreme weather around the world

Attribution

|

18.11.24

jQuery(document).ready(function() { jQuery('.block-related-articles-slider-block_8b84545bb9e8c78ac6a657145e50a8fe .mh').matchHeight({ byRow: false }); });

The post Overshoot: Exploring the implications of meeting 1.5C climate goal ‘from above’ appeared first on Carbon Brief.

Last week, around 180 scientists, researchers and legal experts gathered in Laxenburg, Austria to attend the first-ever international conference focused on the controversial topic of climate “overshoot”.

This hypothesised scenario would see global temperatures initially “overshoot” the Paris Agreement’s aspirational limit of 1.5C, before they are brought back down through techniques that would remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

(For more on the key talking points, new research and discussions that emerged from the three-day conference, see Carbon Brief’s full write-up of the event.)

On the sidelines of the conference, Carbon Brief asked a range of delegates what they consider to be the key “unknowns” around overshoot.

Below are their responses, first as sample quotes, then, in full:

• Dr James Fletcher: “Yes, there will be overshoot, but at what point will that overshoot peak? Are we peaking at 1.6C, 1.7C, 2.1C?”
• Prof Shobha Maharaj: “There are lots of places in the world where adaptation plans have been made to a 1.5C ceiling. The fact is that these plans are going to need to be modified or probably redeveloped.”
• Sir Prof Jim Skea: “There are huge knowledge gaps around overshoot and carbon dioxide removal.”
• Prof Kristie Ebi: “If there is going to be a peak – and, of course, we don’t know what that peak is – then how do you start planning?”
• Prof Lavanya Rajamani: “To me, a key governance unknown is the extent to which our current legal and regulatory architecture…will actually be responsive to the needs of an overshoot world.”
• Prof Nebojsa Nakicenovic: “One of my major concerns has been for a long time…is whether, even after reaching net-zero, negative emissions can actually produce a temperature decline.”
• Prof Debra Roberts: “For me, the big unknown is how all of these areas of increased impact and risk actually intersect with one another and what that means in the real world.”

• Dr Oliver Geden: “[A key unknown] is whether countries are really willing to commit to net-negative trajectories.”
• Dr Carl-Friedrich Schleussner: “This is a bigger concern that I have – that we are pushing the habitability in our societies on this planet above that limit and towards maybe existential limits.”
• Dr Anna Pirani: “I think that tracking global mean surface temperature on an overshoot pathway will be an important unknown.”
• Prof Richard Betts: “One of the key unknowns is are we going to continue to get the land carbon sink that the models produce.”
• Prof Hannah Daly: “The biggest unknown is whether countries can translate these global [overshoot] pathways into sustained domestic action…that is politically and socially feasible.”
• Dr Andrew King: “[W]e still have a lot of uncertainty around other elements in the climate system that relate more to what people actually live through.”

Dr James Fletcher
Former minister for public service, sustainable development, energy, science and technology for Saint Lucia and negotiator at COP21 in Paris.

The key unknown is where we’re going to land. At what point will we peak [temperatures] before we start going down, and how long will we stay in that overshoot period? That is a scary thing. Yes, there will be overshoot, but at what point will that overshoot peak? Are we peaking at 1.6C, 1.7C, 2.1C? All of these are scary scenarios for small island developing states – anything above 1.5C is scary. Every fraction of a degree matters to us. Where we peak is very important and how long we stay in this overshoot period is equally important. That’s when you start getting into very serious, irreversible impacts and tipping points.

Prof Shobha Maharaj
Adjunct professor at the University of Fiji and a coordinating lead author for Working Group II of the IPCC’s seventh assessment

First of all, there is an assumption that we’re going to go back down from overshoot. Back down is not a given. And secondly, we are still in the phase where we are talking about uncertainty. Climate scientists don’t like uncertainty. We are not acknowledging that uncertainty is the new normal… But because we’re so bogged down in terms of uncertainties, we are not moving towards [the issue of] what we do about it. We know it’s coming. We know the temperatures are going to be high. But there is little talk about the action. 

The focus seems to be more on how we can understand this or how we can model this, but not what we do on the ground. Especially when it comes to adaptation planning – [and around] how does this modify whatever the plans are? There are lots of places in the world where adaptation plans have been made to a 1.5C ceiling. The fact is that these plans are going to need to be modified or probably redeveloped. And no one is talking about this, especially in the areas that are least resourced in the world – which sets up a big, big problem.

Sir Prof Jim Skea
Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and emeritus professor at Imperial College London’s Centre for Environmental Policy

There are huge knowledge gaps around overshoot and carbon dioxide removal. As it’s very clear from the themes of this conference, we don’t altogether understand how the Earth would react in taking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. We don’t understand the nature of the irreversibilities and we don’t understand the effectiveness of CDR techniques, which might themselves be influenced by the level of global warming, plus all the equity and sustainability issues surrounding using CDR techniques.

Prof Kristie Ebi
Professor of global health at the University of Washington‘s Center for Health and the Global Environment

There are all kinds of questions about adaptation and how to approach effective adaptation. At the moment, adaptation is primarily assuming a continual increase in global mean surface temperature. If there is going to be a peak – and of course, we don’t know what that peak is – then how do you start planning? Do you change your planning? There are places, for instance when thinking about hard infrastructure, [where overshoot] may result in a change in your plan – because as you come down the backside, maybe the need would be less. For example, when building a bridge taller. And when implementing early warning systems, how do you take into account that there will be a peak and ultimately a decline? There is almost no work in that. I would say that’s one of the critical unknowns.

Prof Lavanya Rajamani
Professor of international environmental law at the University of Oxford

I think there are several scientific unknowns, but I would like to focus on the governance unknowns with respect to overshoot. To me, a key governance unknown is the extent to which our current legal and regulatory architecture – across levels of governance, so domestic, regional and international – will actually be responsive to the needs of an overshoot world and the consequences of actually not having regulatory and governance architectures in place to address overshoot.

Prof Nebojsa Nakicenovic
Distinguished emeritus research scholar at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis and executive director of The World In 2050.

One of my major concerns has been for a long time – as it was clear that we are heading for an overshoot, as we are not reducing the emissions in time – is whether, even after reaching net-zero, negative emissions can actually produce a temperature decline…In other words, there might be asymmetry on the way down [in the global-temperature response to carbon removal] – it might not be symmetrical to the way up [as temperature rise in response to carbon emissions]. And this is really my major concern, that we are planning measures that are so uncertain that we don’t know whether they will reach the goal. 

The last point I want to make is that I think that the scientific community should, under all conditions, make sure that the highest priority is on mitigation.

Prof Debra Roberts
Honorary professor at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, coordinating lead author on the IPCC’s forthcoming special report on climate change and cities, board chair of the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre and co-chair of Working Group II for the IPCC’s sixth assessment

Well, I think coming from the policy and practitioner community, what I’m hearing a lot about are the potential impacts that come from the exceedance component of overshoot. What I’m not hearing a lot about is the responses to overshoot and their impacts – and how those impacts might interact with the impacts from temperature exceedance. So there’s quite a complex risk landscape emerging. It’s three dimensional in many ways, but we’re only talking about one dimension and, for policymakers, we need to understand that three dimensional element in order to understand what options remain on the table. For me, the big unknown is how all of these areas of increased impact and risk actually intersect with one another and what that means in the real world.

Dr Oliver Geden
Senior fellow and head of the climate policy and politics research cluster at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs and vice-chair of IPCC Working Group III

[A key unknown] is whether countries are really willing to commit to net-negative trajectories. We are assuming, in science, global pathways going net negative, with hardly any country saying they want to go there. So maybe it is just an academic thought experiment. So we don’t know yet if [overshoot] is even relevant. It is relevant in the sense that if we do, [the] 1.5C [target] stays on the table. But I think the next phase needs to be that countries – or the UNFCCC as a whole – needs to decide what they want to do. 

Dr Carl-Friedrich Schleussner
Research group leader and senior research scholar at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis

I’m convinced that there’s an upper limit of overshoot that we can afford – and it might be not far outside the Paris range [1.5C-2C] – before human societies will be overwhelmed with the task of bringing temperatures back down again. This [societal limit] is lower than the geophysical limits or the CDR limit.

The impacts of climate change and the challenges that will come with it will undermine society’s abilities to cooperatively engage in what is required to achieve long-term temperature reversal. This is a bigger concern that I have – that we are pushing the habitability in our societies on this planet above that limit and towards maybe existential limits. We may not be able to walk back from it, even if we wanted to. That is a big unknown to me.

I’m convinced that there is an upper limit to how much overshoot we can afford, and it might be just about 2C or a bit above – it might not be much more than that. But we do not have good evidence for this. But I think these scenarios of going to 3C and then assuming we can go back down – I have doubts that future societies grappling with the impacts of climate change will be in the position to embark on such an endeavour.

Dr Anna Pirani
Senior research associate at the Euro-Mediterranean Center on Climate Change (CMCC) and former head of the Technical Support Unit for Working Group I of the IPCC

I think that tracking global mean surface temperature on an overshoot pathway will be an important unknown – how to take account of natural variability in that context, to inform where we are on an overshoot pathway and how well we’re doing on it. I think, methodologically, that would prove to be a challenge. The fact that it occurs over many, many years – many decades – and, yet, we sort of think about it as a nice curve. We see these graphs that say “by the 2050s, we will be here and we’ll start declining and so on”. I think that what that actually translates to in the evolution of global surface temperatures is going to be very difficult to measure and track. Even how we report on that, internationally, in the UNFCCC [UN Framework Convention on Climate Change] context and what the WMO [World Meteorological Organization] does in terms of reporting an overshoot trajectory, that would be quite a challenge. 

Prof Richard Betts
Head of climate impacts research in the Met Office Hadley Centre and professor at the University of Exeter

One of the key unknowns is are we going to continue to get the land carbon sink that the models produce. We have got model simulations of returning from an overshoot. 

If you are lowering temperatures, you have got to reduce emissions. The amount you reduce emissions depends on how much carbon is taken up naturally by the system – by forests, oceans and so on. The models will do this; they give you an answer. But we don’t know whether they are doing the right thing. They have never been tested in this kind of situation.

In my field of expertise, one of the key [unknowns] is how these carbon sinks are going to behave in the future. That is why we are trying to get real-world data into the models – including through the Amazon FACE project – so we can really try and narrow the uncertainties in future carbon sinks. If the carbon sinks are weaker than the models think, it is going to be even harder to reduce emissions and we will need to remove even more by carbon capture and removal. 

Prof Hannah Daly
Professor of sustainable energy at University College Cork

We know ever more about the profound – and often irreversible – damages that will be felt as we overshoot 1.5C. Yet we seem no closer to understanding what will unlock the urgent decarbonisation that remains our only way to avoid the worst impacts of climate change. 

Global models can show, on paper, what returning temperatures to safer levels after overshoot might look like. The biggest unknown is whether countries can translate these global pathways into sustained domestic action – over decades and without precedent in history – that is politically and socially feasible.

Dr Andrew King
Associate professor in climate science at the University of Melbourne

I think, firstly, can we actually achieve net-negative emissions to bring temperatures down past a peak? It’s a completely different world and, unfortunately, it’s likely to be challenging and we’re setting ourselves up to need to do it more. So I think that’s a huge unknown. 

But then, beyond that, I think also, whilst we’ve built some understanding of how global temperature would respond to net-zero or net-negative emissions, we still have a lot of uncertainty around other elements in the climate system that relate more to what people actually live through. In our warming world, we’ve seen that global warming relates to local warming being experienced by everyone at different amounts. But, in an overshoot climate, we would see quite diverse changes for different people, different areas of the world, experiencing very different changes in our local climates. And also definitely worsening of some climate hazards and possibly reversibility in others, so a very different risk landscape as well, emerging post net-zero – and I think we still don’t know very much about that as well.

Overshoot: Exploring the implications of meeting 1.5C climate goal ‘from above’

Global temperature

|

08.10.25

State of the climate: 2025 on track to be second or third warmest year on record

Global temperature

|

29.07.25

Guest post: Why 2024’s global temperatures were unprecedented, but not surprising

Global temperature

|

18.06.25

Mapped: How climate change affects extreme weather around the world

Attribution

|

18.11.24

jQuery(document).ready(function() { jQuery('.block-related-articles-slider-block_a91458b26117f73e3d0f2c7cf966344d .mh').matchHeight({ byRow: false }); });

The post Experts: The key ‘unknowns’ of overshooting the 1.5C global-warming limit appeared first on Carbon Brief.